life long friends

friends with feeling for each other take years to talk of their mutual love great story, brilliant characters and really great narration 👍👍

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A slow burning, but beautiful, passionate, love story

Well read this book earlier in the year. I was so glad that there was an audiobook version, the narrator is fantastic and get all the voices so well it’s a beautiful but slow burning romantic story. I cannot wait for the next book in the series. really love Millie, she’s a great character, but Charlotte is just as good and awesome. Very hot scenes as well. Go listen it’s amazing

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A lovely warm hug for your ears

I listened to this on a long drive and found myself grinning despite being in a traffic jam! Enchanting and real characters and beautifully written as you’d expect from Clare Ashton. Do yourself a favour and download it.

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A warm cheese toastie for your soul!

Excuse me a minute, while I go and pick my jaw up off the floor. My God, this book is amazing! In true Clare Ashton fashion, Meeting Millie, blew my mind. I absolutely loved this fantastic book with all my heart! This story is full the brim of laugh out loud moments, complex characters, stunning descriptive imagery, and heart wrenching moments that took my breath away. I couldn’t put it down, but at the same time didn’t want the book to end. It’s the ultimate literary paradox.

I thought the narration was solid & the accents were distinctive & suited the characters.

Meeting Millie is a gorgeous friends-to-lovers, opposites attract, slow burn, romance set in the heart of picturesque Oxford. This beautiful story spans over a decade, flashing forwards and back throughout the years, and follows the lives of the adorable socially awkward, upper-middle-class Charlotte Albright and the charismatic, vivacious, working-class Millie Banks.

Meeting Millie is the second Clare Aston book I’ve read and just like my first experience, Ashton has proved to be the ultimate storyteller. Her writing is like a balm for the soul. Every single page of this incredible book is dripping with character and colour, and I could feel myself falling deeper in love with Oxford and its inhabitants. Clare’s descriptive imagery transports you to the world she’s created, and her realistic, 3-Dimensional characters make you long to be part of their world.

I’ve never stepped foot in Oxford, but Clare painted such a vivid picture in my mind, it felt like I’d lived there all my life. She describes the city in so much detail and clarity, I’ve added “visit Oxford and read Ashton’s Oxford series in the park” to my bucket list. It isn’t just the landscape’s imagery that took my breath away in this book. The exquisite attention to detail every single character possesses makes you feel like you are experiencing everything they experience. I laughed with them, cried with them, felt the same butterflies and heat as them, and felt the heart wrenching moments all the way to my core.

The leading ladies and supporting characters feel so well-rounded and real you can’t help but love them. Except Richard, he's just a dick. All of them add to the world Charlotte and Millie live in and make it feel so realistic. Olivia, Virginia, and Nicola all have a piece of my heart, they are so funny, even Nicola. I want them to all have a full-length book of their own. I also kinda want to be Virginia when I grow up, she is hilarious!

I could probably write an essay about how much I adore Charlotte and Millie; they are written to perfection, and I feel wildly protective over both of them. You get a true sense of their individual personalities, and the way their friendship and relationship is portrayed is utterly divine and aspirational (to this tiny lesbian hermit anyway). Throughout the story, Clare evoked emotions deep within my soul, from side splitting laughter to the feeling of my heart being ripped from my chest in sadness. However, one thing I will be forever grateful for is the way Ashton portrayed the realistic hell that is, Endometriosis. This is the first book I have ever read that depicts the feelings linked to this disease in such a realistic and respectful way. It doesn’t push the issue or make it for front of the story, but the acknowledgement of it and the simple truth of it just being part of the character made my heart swell with joy and compassion. Representation matters, and this meant the world to me.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough and look forward to returning to Oxford to visit Charlotte and Millie many more times to come.

I was incredibly honoured to have been given an ARC of this phenomenal book.

This is an unbiased and honest review.

Trigger Warning!
Pregnancy Loss

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1 person found this helpful

Beautiful love story

One of the best books I've listened to in a long time, loved the characters development

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second chance

beautiful story of best friends at university, shy lesbian with no experience, straight girl with a lot. 12yrs later, both back working in Oxford and a chance encounter.
I was hooked on this slow burn, writing explores friend and family relationships over yrs, but it's the romantic feelings slowly developing that enthrall. Great narration too.

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Very slow burn, lovely book but...

... unfortunately I found the narrator's voice and style of speaking quite distracting. It is not because she's English (I am too) but more the fact she makes Millie, when not playing at being from the 1950s, sound too posh and not like she comes from a London comprehensive school. More important to me is that her reading style, especially as the narrator, is disjointed, which I found difficult to listen to, although I thought the audiobook sounded a bit better after I changed the audio speed to 1.2 but all together I felt the audio spoiled the book.

Clare Ashton is an accomplished writer, sensitive with great descriptions and in depth characters. She includees plenty of life's trails and tribulations, especially relating to endometriosis, but there is also plenty of tongue in cheek humour along the way.

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Great story

Read this a while back, but wanted to listen to it as an audiobook before I pick up the next book about Olivia. Really enjoy the story of Charlotte and Millie, love how their backstory is told in flashbacks that are within the present day chapters but not in a confusing way. Great book.

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Charlotte and Millie.

Great love story between these two women. Thoroughly enjoyed both the book and narration. Just loved it.
I'm looking forward to #2.

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cute

Very British!!!
I love the comedy And the back and Forward from past to future and The different perspectives From each side all to Gather a very good story.

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