Underbelly cover art

Underbelly

The instant Sunday Times bestseller from Mother Pukka – the unmissable, gripping and electrifying fiction debut

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Underbelly

By: Anna Whitehouse
Narrated by: Jasmine Blackborow, Nathalie Buscombe
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About this listen

Underbelly

[n.] singular

The soft underside or abdomen of a mammal.

An area vulnerable to attack.

A dark, hidden part of society.

Lo and Dylan are living parallel lives, worlds apart.

Lo is the ultimate middle-class mother, all perfectly polished Instagram posts and armchair activism. Dylan is just about surviving on a zero-hours telemarketing job from her flat, trying to keep food on the table. But when they meet at the school gates, they are catapulted into each other's homes and lives - with devastating consequences....

Explosive, sharply humorous and unflinchingly honest, Underbelly slices through the filtered surface of modern women's lives to expose the dark truth beneath.

Read by Nathalie Buscombe and Jasmine Blackborow, featuring the authors.

©2021 Anna Whitehouse (P)2021 Orion Publishing Group Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Psychological Women's Fiction Scary Witty Tear-jerking Suspense

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Critic reviews

"Darkly voyeuristic but with heart - as funny as it is painful and true. We loved it." (Grazia)

"I don't think I've ever turned the pages of a book so quickly. So sharp, so tender...truly excellent storytelling." (Daisy Buchanan)

"Entertaining and playful but with huge depth, meaning and heart. I raced through it." (Emma Gannon)

All stars
Most relevant
I liked this book and I enjoyed reading. While reading I felt Dylan was very similar to what happened to Cash Garraway, and how she shared her struggles but the middle class 'insta mums' all ganged together to tear her down,

These aspirational insta mums who pretend they are scummy mummies because they feed their kids fish fingers once in a blue moon, promoting this when really they order Hello Fresh every night.

Thank you for writing this book.

Feels like what happened to Cash Garraway

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well worth a listen, says just as much about the modern world and people poor communication and the affects that can have on each other as it does social media and the anonymous world we can live our lives in.

There are some some views, feelings and experience that women have being told first hand that I think as a man are worth considering. Men don't experience some of the things mentioned in this book so it can't be taken for granted that we can fully appreciate the affect it can have.

On a positive note there are some funny moments too.

intresting and show a real view on things

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I really enjoyed the audio version of this book. The reader is brilliant. Her ability to switch accents and infuse the words with emotions, suspense, attitudes and character perspectives is Oscar worthy. Loved the reader. The story in this book has hit the zeitgeist and balances real world relationships with online presence and audiences. It shows how modern online audiences are like the baying crowds at gladiatorial battles in the colosseums of antiquity. It shows how it affects lives in reality. It shows how we cannot see the real person through the tinted (and tainted) lenses of social media. One flaw in the story telling is the disappearance of Lo’s husband in the end. Something was happening in her marriage that made Lo shut down conversations with Dillon but that didn’t return to the story and is left somewhat unresolved to the reader. But thoroughly enjoyed this story.

Brilliant performer. Great story

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It’s hard to review this book, as it isn’t a bad book but I didn’t enjoy it. The problem for me lies in the bleakness of the topic, something which is a relatively new and yet completely entrenched part of the world now; social media and the business of influencing. I have no doubt about the accuracy of the portrayal; Anna Whitehouse has lived and breathed this for years, but if it’s as described I have absolutely no idea why anyone ever does it. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that’s made me feel so unsettled and disturbed and maybe that was the point but this one a dark stuff. Worth it for awareness but really hard to understand why they do what they do. It’s also hard to distance Anna and Mother Pukka in this, something which I’m sure the writing team wouldn’t want. It just feels as though this is all stuff that’s happened, or so close to stuff that’s happened, rather than fiction, something which the narration didn’t help as the voice was incredibly similar to Anna’s.

Hard hitting stuff

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Makes you Pause and Reflect. A well executed novel where you are forced to switch and change allegiance to the two narrators.

Makes you Pause and Reflect

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