So I'm sitting in my car in the garage at 9:47 PM - my sacred 45 minutes before I go inside and pretend I just got back from Target - and Johanna Morrigan is describing masturbating to a mental montage that includes, among other things, the Marx Brothers. And I am laughing so hard I'm worried the neighbors can hear me through the garage walls.
This book wrecked me in the best way.
Johanna Morrigan Deserves Her Own Patron Saint
Here's the thing about Johanna. She's 14, she's poor (like council-estate-with-too-many-kids-and-a-dad-on-disability poor), and she goes on a local TV quiz show and humiliates herself so spectacularly that she decides the only option is to kill Johanna entirely and become someone new. Enter Dolly Wilde: a leather-jacketed, Doc Martens-wearing music critic persona she builds from scratch out of records, books, and sheer desperation.
Caitlin Moran writes Johanna's poverty with this specific, unflinching honesty that hit me somewhere unexpected. The family eating toast for dinner. The way Johanna calculates exactly how many pounds her music reviews will bring in and what bills they'll cover. Her mum's quiet exhaustion. I was a marketing manager, not a kid from Wolverhampton, but the frantic energy of a teenage girl trying to think her way out of her circumstances? That felt real in a way that surprised me.
And the reinvention arc - Johanna becoming Dolly, getting drunk at gigs, writing eviscerating reviews that destroy bands in 600 words, sleeping with older men because she thinks that's what powerful women do - it's funny and cringey and then suddenly it's heartbreaking. There's a scene where she's in a hotel room with a much older rock star and she's narrating it like she's having this grand adventure, but you can feel the gap between who she's pretending to be and the kid she actually is. I had to pause because Sophie woke up from her nap (of course), and when I came back twenty minutes later, I was still thinking about it.
Louise Brealey Gets the Assignment
Brealey (who you might know as Molly Hooper from Sherlock) narrates this like she IS Johanna - breathless and funny and a little too loud and absolutely convinced of herself even when she's spectacularly wrong. Her voice has this brightness that works perfectly for a teenager who's performing confidence she doesn't actually have. When Johanna shifts into her Dolly Wilde persona - cocky, acerbic, rattling off music criticism - Brealey drops into this slightly lower, more theatrical register. And then when the mask slips, when Johanna is alone and scared, the voice goes quiet and young again. It's not showy voice acting. It's smart, subtle shifts that make you feel the difference between the girl and the character she's built.
The secondary characters don't get wildly different voices, but honestly? This is Johanna's show. The book lives inside her head, and Brealey commits fully to that headspace - the run-on thoughts, the manic lists of things Johanna loves, the moments where humor tips into real pain.
At 9 and a half hours, this is a perfect week listen for me. I finished it in five days across drop-offs, one miraculous two-hour nap from Sophie (I think she might be coming down with something but I'm not looking that gift horse in the mouth), and three consecutive nights in the garage.
The Part Where I Get Honest About Who This Is For
Look, there are sex scenes. Quite a few. And they're written from the perspective of a 16-year-old who has no idea what she's doing, which means they're equal parts awkward, funny, and occasionally uncomfortable in a way that's clearly intentional. There's also a LOT of drinking and some drug use. If that's going to bother you, fair warning.
Also - and this is the thing that made me recommend it to exactly zero members of my mom's group chat - this book doesn't wrap up neatly. Johanna doesn't magically fix everything. She just... starts to figure out that the girl she built has some serious problems, and she begins the slow, unglamorous work of rebuilding. The ending is hopeful but not tied with a bow. Which honestly felt more earned than a perfect happy ending would have.
Did it make me cry at school pickup? Almost. I had to switch to a podcast for the last five minutes of the drive so I didn't walk into the school with mascara rivers. Worth it though.
Not my usual comfort read. More like... a comfort read's slightly unhinged younger sister who shows up with cheap wine and tells you the truth about things. Let Me Love You gave me a similar feeling - that messy, honest kind of story that doesn't let you off the hook emotionally.
Car Time Verdict: Give This Girl a Credit
If you were ever a teenage girl who tried on personalities like outfits - or if you're raising one and need a reminder of what that chaos feels like from the inside - this book is for you. If you need content to be squeaky clean or endings to be perfectly neat, skip it. But if you've got a week's worth of listening pockets and you want something that's genuinely funny and then sneaks up and punches you in the heart? Survived 47 pauses and still made sense. My book club will love this (if I ever have time for book club again).
