Underbelly

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

By: Anna Whitehouse

Narrated by: Jasmine Blackborow, Nathalie Buscombe

Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's Summary

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

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) 

Brilliantly beautiful story of the modern age

Can’t recommend this book more highly . What an insight into the 21st century struggles of friendships in the scrutiny of social media . Should we all go back to using 1980s nokia phones ? Or maybe just all decide to be honest and kind to one another x

Fatphobic content

I was quite excited to start this book but unfortunately when I got to chapter 4 & listened to the blatant fatphobic content - in reference to the man behind the mum in the queue I had to turn it off & return the title.
If your someone who suffers with body image, eating disorders or weight related issues I would not recommend.

Feels like what happened to Cash Garraway

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.

Gripping!

The first chapter is gripping and heartbreaking and incredibly uncomfortable to read / listen - brilliant writing throughout. I’m only 3/4 way through but feel compelled to review now. It really is addictively brilliant.

Book cover misleading

I found this really boring with characters you couldn’t care less what happened to them. I think grown women who are so obsessed with social media and care so much about what strangers think need to get a life. Also, Dilan was always worried about her ex… did it not occur to her to google him or find out where he was… ridiculous. Lo was self obsessed and immature. The narration was ok, the different accents and voices were a bit all over the place. The cover of the book is very misleading, it’s not a murder mystery and I’m still unclear to whom they’re referring to when they talk about ‘she wants to destroy it’ . All in all, wish I’d not bothered.

Didn’t want it to stop!

Loved this book, I was really gripped by the 2 stories and the performances of the audiobook narrators Jasmine and Natalie were SO good. Genuinely made me reflect on the time I spend on my phone and social media. I think I was only disappointed that it came to an end! I wanted to know what happened next, but I think there was a point to it ending how it did.

Brilliant performer. Great story

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.

Wordy and messy

40 chapters in, and this novel seems to only just have picked up momentum. The literary quality is not complex or rich enough to carry this through as literary fiction. It’s more of a really, really lengthy reflection on the possible negative effects of social media use. The plot moves excruciatingly slowly, the characters fall kind of flat in all the faff. It feels padded to death. Lo’s voice actress is good, Dylan’s sounds like she’s performing a piece of bad spoken word poetry. All the unnatural pausing within sentences sound like line breaks. The end was decent but it took way too long to get there, with little rising tension throughout to maintain the reader’s interest. Plot predictable, too. I was bored.

A modern tale of friendship

A story of women, if friendship and love on so many levels - a must listen

Incredibly relevant

Absolutely loved this book. So relevant to any woman or girl in 2022 with a smartphone.

relevant and important

Sometimes an uncomfortable experience as you’re immersed in both main characters’ lives but so transformative and all women on social media should definitely read. A hugely relevant novel that i am sure most people will be able to relate to in some way. Beautifully written, and read too.