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The Unmumsy Mum cover art

The Unmumsy Mum

By: The Unmumsy Mum
Narrated by: Sarah Turner
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

THIS IS NOT A PARENTING MANUAL. THIS IS REAL LIFE.

The Unmumsy Mum writes candidly about motherhood like it really is: the messy, maddening, hilarious reality, how there is no 'one size fits all' approach and how it is sometimes absolutely fine to not know what you are doing.

The lessons she's learnt while grappling with two small boys - from birth to teething, 3am night feeds to toddler tantrums, soft play to toilet training - will have you roaring with laughter and taking great comfort in the fact that it's definitely not just you...

©2016 Sarah Turner (P)2016 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"The Unmumsy Mum is hilarious. She says all the things we're scared to share - I love her!" (Giovanna Fletcher)

What listeners say about The Unmumsy Mum

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

So so

Maybe not the best material for a book and worked better as a blog.. The amount of negative feelings accumulated in 6 hours just brought me more anxiety than joy or reassurance or relief of ability to relate. Not that the book doesn't have any positive messages, but I think they are drowned in the poop, barf and 'I can't get out of the house' stories. It is possible that the book just wasn't for me or I could not relate to the cultural setting, maybe parenting is different in UK. I would not recommend this book to an expecting parent. I will listen to it again after my son is born and revise.

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10 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars

Supposedly relatable, but just depressing.

I don’t relate in any way to this whiney spoilt ‘mum’ who thinks she is better than other mothers because she gets drunk and insults her children behind their backs. Self congratulatory, poorly written, generally a bit depressing... couldn’t stand to listen past the half way mark, too exasperated at how self obsessed, navel gazing and boring this person is. The same joke written 10 000x into a book, same language and conclusion to each story. Sorry for the fans, I really wanted to like this but it was honestly, genuinely TERRIBLE.

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8 people found this helpful

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Boring, predictable and depressive

I had high expectations of this book but it annoyed me all the way through. The author tried hard to be funny by sometimes swearing in her expressions but the stories are not funny at all.
All credit to her for making a business out of this.
I would not recommend it, sorry.

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7 people found this helpful

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honest and hilarious!

absolutely loved your book sarah! honest, hilarious, emotional and reassuring! all mums should read it!

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4 people found this helpful

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Difficult listening if your baby has a disibility

I like that Sarah is talking about the things that women quite often feel ashamed to say and the book is meant to be an honest and frank account of motherhood. That in itself is an empowering thing to do. However as an expectant mother of a baby with significant needs it’s a bit hard to swallow at times. I can’t help but feel that the balance is more towards the drags of motherhood and therefore can at times seem a little ungrateful and negative. In fact I felt that a lot of the book is a complaint at how hard motherhood is.

I would give the world to know that my baby is going to be ok so a lot of the humour was lost on me. I’ve read ‘Happy Mum, Happy Baby’ by Giovanna Fletcher and found that to be much easier to digest and would recommend for those in a similar situation to myself.

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3 people found this helpful

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A depressing account of motherhood

A thoroughly depressing 6hrs of moaning by Sarah Turner achieves one of two things: 1) convince any intending parent that parenthood is going to be a horrific experience, or 2) convince any parent that they can't be doing that bad a job if this woman has published her mildly amusing accounts of apparent incompetence at running her own life, nevermind her two boys' lives as well!

The most positive point of the book, in my opinion, is that Sarah's voice and accent is really rather lovely. However, as she drones on about her misery in motherhood, it turned rather sour. She regularly reassures us (or perhaps herself?), that her two boys are totally "smashing", and that she wouldn't change motherhood for the world, but those words are completely false against a backdrop of incessant moaning. I feel thoroughly sorry for her husband James who sounds like he gets the brunt of it: "I am never taking YOUR children to the doctor again".

The structure of the book is quite an odd one too. Sarah sets out chapters and parts, but I cannot recall how any of them differentiate from each other. There are fundamentally 4 elements to the content: 1) all the horror/comedy stories her children have provided her with often involving poo or urine; 2) her jealous glorification of "perfect" social media mums that she can never measure up to (yes, they're fake, well done!); 3) her justification that it is not possible to spin all the plates she needs to, because there is only one plate that matters anymore; 4) her self-pitying reminders that she can't have 10 seconds to herself although appears to know every single daytime TV programme known to man (even though her kids supposedly watch wall-to-wall TV); oh, and a bonus one: 5) how its all totally worth it. PS. I will assume that her references to dependence on alcohol once her boys are in bed is an attempt at (repeated) humour, but after the 3rd chapter, I double checked the phone number of the NSPCC.

For what it's worth, I thoroughly enjoyed the first few chapters as it seemed a funny and light hearted introduction. Unfortunately, it wasn't an intro...the rest was just more of the same with no depth or value, the pattern was set to repeat and it became a slog well before the end,

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Fab!

Great to listen to whilst my baby (sometimes) napped as I don't have the energy to read. Xx

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1 person found this helpful

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Honest and hilarious

I loved the genuine feeling of love behind every story told and sheer honesty made it feel like someone was really just letting it out. I believe this is the antidote to stuff how to train your child manuals

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Thank goodness for this book!

This book had me laughing (sometimes at her anecdotes and sometimes she triggered memories of my own), crying (sometimes from laughing so much, sometimes because I could relate to what she was saying and relieved to hear that I'm not the only struggling mama) and feeling grateful for my family, but at ease to have a rant after a crappy day. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Thank you, Unmumsy Mum! Highly recommend!

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1 person found this helpful

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very funny and on point

amazing and really great for first time mum made me feel like I'm not alone.

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1 person found this helpful