Review: Suburb by Steven Kedie (3.5/5)

 Tom Fray leaves university with a simple plan; get a job, save some money and go travelling.

To put his plan into action he moves home to the suburbs of Manchester where he finds the people he left behind all stuck in the same routines as when he went away.

Feeling trapped between his old and new lives, Tom is desperate to escape. Then he meets Kate, a married neighbour and his simple plan becomes a lot more complicated.




I was drawn to this book when I read the blurb. Without wanting to go into too much personal detail I wondered whether I would relate to Tom because of my own life after the past few years. I feel as if life is passing me by and I'm still doing the same stuff I was doing years ago with no sign of actually doing anything remotely worthwhile. I have lists of things I want to do, but not the get up and go to actually get them done. I often read books where the main character eventually escapes to go on and live a fantastic life but rather than giving me a kick up the arse it often leaves me a bit jealous!

I went to university but stayed at home and it's a massive regret of mine. I put in minimal effort and felt that had I moved away and had that responsibility I might have tried harder. That said I easily related to Tom and the characters in this book and the life they had at university. I could easily imagine the setting of the book because it was so similar to my own. Admittedly I didn't know what to expect from this book, as I said I wanted to read it for various reasons and didn't have particularly huge expectations but overall I did really enjoy the book.

It's a hard one to categorize genre wise, I don't know how I'd explain it in real life or indeed in this review except to say it's a real true to life, believable coming of age story that those finishing uni, or those already finished and wondering what to do with their lives will definitely be able to relate to. Story wise it's a bit more out there than most peoples lives but of course that's needed for the purpose of actually entertaining the reader. As a self published novel there were a few grammatical errors but the writing, characterisation and storytelling made it virtually unnoticeable. For anyone who has been to, is going to or has finished university I'd definitely reccommend picking up this book.

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