Counting Stars

by Keris Stainton

A new life in a new city - what could possibly go wrong . . . ?

When eighteen-year-old Anna leaves school and moves to Liverpool, she feels like her life is finally beginning. She's landed her dream job at a theatre, and she's moving into an exciting (if not slightly run-down) houseshare on a buzzing street lined with shops, bars, and buskers. Best of all, her new flatmates are kind, welcoming and a lot of fun - what more could she ask for?

But her new life is also a little overwhelming. Anna's job quickly falls through, and then she realises that although her new friends are great, they're also a little mixed-up... and it's not long before Anna starts using her blog to talk about her experiences, from the hilarious to the ridiculous to the little-bit-scary. But when Anna spills a bigger secret than she can handle, suddenly the consequences are all too real. She'll have to prove she has the mettle to make it in the big city, or risk losing everything she thinks she wants.

• ISBN10: 1471404633
• ISBN13: 9781471404634
• Publish Date: 3 September 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Hot Key Books
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[Joséphine]

Note: I received a finished copy for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Initial thoughts: This book kept things thoroughly real. It's also the kind of book I was looking for when I was still in university but couldn't find. There were quite a lot of characters to keep track of in Counting Stars but I think that that was a good thing. The depth of an individual character might have suffered a little as a result but this shifted the emphasis to the relations among them. When we're limited to one main character, we only see things from their perspective but Counting Stars negated that because things became clearer from both sides of the coin. By focusing on a variety of people, there was a lot of room of explorations of friendship, ambition, sexuality, family dynamics, social media (vlogging) and the general foray into adulthood as they seized their first stages of independence.

[Leah]

This was an interesting read. It took me a while to get into it as the third-person narration can sometimes seem as if you're an outsider looking in, and this very much felt like that. It was a tad stilted, a tad awkward, but I soon got into it and it ended up being a really enjoyable book. It was relatively drama-free, too, which is always amazing, although I knew Anna's other personality was going to end up causing trouble for her - she was too naive, too willing to just spill random details of her life without thinking about the consequences (and as such she came across as a VERY young 18 compared to Alfie, Nina, Molly and Sean).

I'm not sure which genre this falls in. It's not young adult, that I know, and it sort of straddles the line between New Adult and Chick Lit, and it can work for both genres. Keris Stainton is a fantastic writer, and I loved the Liverpool setting and once I got into the book, I really got into it and it ended up being a really interesting read. I especially loved how all the characters had their own storylines, it wasn't just about Anna, it was about all of them and it was so, so nice to see them all get along without a bitchy one in the group. It was so refreshing.