Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

First of all, thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC ebook of this new book by Sophie Kinsella, which is due to be published on October 8, 2024.

Secondly, please please please take note that this new book is a work of fiction, but Kinsella herself stated that it is her most autobiographical work to date. Therefore, before you decide to read What Does It Feel Like?, please know that it is about a terminal illness stemming from a brain tumor.

I requested this ARC because I have been reading Sophie Kinsella’s books for a very long time, and I was devastated when I found out that she was suffering from a very significant health crisis. Here is a health update she herself posted on Twitter in April of this year:

This new book is beautiful and powerful and poignant. It is well-written and bears many of the hallmarks one can expect from a Kinsella novel. It is so obvious that it is told from the heart, that Kinsella is pouring out her own emotions and her fears onto each page. It is a story of survival, of determination, of love. But, even in just 144 pages, it is painful to read in parts. Once I started reading this book, I simply couldn’t put it down until I finished it. I was totally invested in the lives of Eve and Nick and their five children. I think Nick should be nominated for husband of the year, the decade, the century perhaps. He never gives up. He never loses his patience when Eve asks him the same questions over and over, day after day, week after week.

There will be those who say that Sophie/Eve had it “easy” because they were wealthy, privileged women with the means to obtain the very best health care, caregivers, therapists, etc. I dare anyone to read this book and say that Eve had it easy, as she learned to walk again, learned to do the most basic of things like making herself a cup of tea. Cancer, in any form, is a monster. It does not take it “easy” on the rich or the famous. It is a monster. Full Stop.

Despite the dark theme of this novella, there is humor. In one scene, the parents have gathered the family over a game of Scrabble to talk about Eve’s illness and diagnosis. They have consulted with social workers, doctors, and child specialists as to how to handle the dissemination of this terrible news. There are tears, but there is also laughter, and there is the child-like innocence of moving on to something more important in the moment, as demonstrated when ten-year-old Isobel asks if “yit” is a word.

Five days ago, Sophie Kinsella posted again on Twitter (her first post since the health update shown above) a photo from a photoshoot to promote this new book. She appears to be on the other side of this traumatic experience, smiling for the camera, perched up on the back of her sofa. I do hope that Sophie rises above the bleak statistics Eve described in the book for this terrible disease. I look forward to reading many more of Sophie Kinsella’s future books, and I wish her all the best.