Genre: Mystery

Pages: 405

First published: 2025

Original language: English

The plot:

A darkly funny, emotionally charged story about motherhood, friendship, and the complicated expectations placed on women.

Nicki, Lauren, Charlotte and Steffi have been friends since university, but their lives have moved in very different directions as they’ve reached their 30s. Charlotte is desperate to become a mother, Lauren is overwhelmed by the realities of motherhood and struggling with post-natal depression. Nicki is heavily pregnant, and Steffi has chosen to be child-free. Their different experiences may sound straightforward, but Bourne makes it clear that none of the women’s experiences fits neatly into a single category.

The story centers around Nicki’s baby shower, organized by Charlotte on an unbearably hot summer’s day. What should be a celebratory afternoon soon becomes something much darker, when a fire is started that damages four homes and fractures the four women’s friendship. The novel moves between different perspectives, memories and the subsequent police investigation, gradually revealing the tensions and resentments that have been simmering beneath the surface.

The mystery gives the novel its momentum, but it is the relationships that drive the story and hold our interest. The question ultimately isn’t simply, “who started the fire?”; it is how these women have reached a point where so much anger, hurt and misunderstanding can exist between friends who know each other so well.

What did I think of this book?

I loved this book. It is funny, uncomfortable, sharply written and relatable – I think all of us are one of these women in some ways. It’s a surprisingly heartbreaking novel too. Bourne has an uncanny ability to take subjects that feel familiar, and expose the less comfortable truths hiding underneath them.

The compassion with which she approaches her characters is what impressed me most. It would have been easy to make this book a simple diatribe on the argument for being a mother vs being child-free, but instead Bourne allows every reader to have their own complicated relationship with the idea. There is longing and joy, but there is also guilt and regret, often existing simultaneously.

That emotional complexity is what makes the novel feel so real.

The friendship between the four women feels well observed. There is something very painful about watching people who have known each other for years become strangers in small ways. Our lives change. Our priorities change. Sometimes the people who know us best are also the people most capable of hurting us.

This book isn’t perfect. The social commentary occasionally feels a bit heavy-handed, and the mystery at times takes a back-seat to the foursome’s internal struggles. The resolution also feels rushed and a bit, dare I say it, daft? (no spoilers!)

It feels like an odd way to conclude, given how carefully Bourne has built the tensions up to that point.

But these are minor gripes. The emotional resonance I felt reading this book more than makes up for its failings. Bourne isn’t interested in giving us easy answers, and I respected that.

What was most interesting about this book?

For me, it was undoubtedly how Bourne explores the pressures around motherhood.

There is an uncomfortable, infuriating assumption that all women will either become mothers, or want to become mothers. So Thrilled For You examines what happens when women don’t fit into those boxes. They might desperately want children. They may find motherhood harder than they expected. They may not want children at all.

I was pleased that Bourne doesn’t present one experience as the “right” one. Instead, she shows how easily women judge each other when their lives look different. Ultimately there is no right or wrong way to live our lives.

The novel also has plenty to say about friendship. Long friendships carry enormous emotional baggage – old arguments, unspoken resentments, assumptions about who someone used to be, and expectations about who they should become. We have all felt a combination of this at some point, and it is this relatability that makes the central friendships as compelling as the mystery.

The title also holds a deliciously dark irony. We are all expected, at different points in our life, to be So Thrilled For You.

But what happens when we’re not?

What am I going to take away from this book?

We rarely know the full story behind another person’s choices.

It’s so easy to look at another woman’s life and think she has everything. And by everything, what we usually mean is everything we don’t have: a family, a career, a marriage, freedom, stability. A fulfilled life. This novel challenges that comparison by showing us what is happening behind closed doors.

This novel is also about allowing friendships space to evolve. Ultimately, people change. None of us are the same person we were when we were young – some of us are not the same person we were 10 years ago. Sometimes, true friendship means accepting that the person you knew at 19, isn’t the same person you know 20 years later, at 39.

Being supportive doesn’t always mean pretending everything is wonderful, either. Real friendships need empathy, honesty, and a willingness to listen without judgement.

Funny, tense and emotionally messy, So Thrilled For You is much more than a story about a disastrous baby shower. It is thoughtful, funny and relatable – if you are a woman, you will almost certainly see elements of yourself in one of the women in this book. I raced through this book but parts of it lingered with me long afterwards, and that’s always a satisfying combination – hopefully it will be the same for you too.

Rating : 5/5