Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

I can see this one making a huge splash next year - in fact, it already seems to be! Fundamentally unfolds at breakneck speed, brimming with razor sharp humour, poking into taboo subjects most people would rather turn a blind eye too. If you read and loved Guest House for Young Widows and wished there could be a hilarious fictionalised version featuring a young woman who made one terrible mistake as a teenager and a queer lecturer in way over her head, get yourself a copy of Fundamentally.

Its pace is the weak point for me. I know it's not supposed to be a factually accurate depiction of a UN initiative to rehabilitate ISIS brides, but it feels like the author just skipped over the parts that felt too tricky or lengthy to include. Nadia, the lecturer who suddenly finds herself running the rehabiliation programme for ISIS brides in Iraq, arrives at base, then suddenly it's one month later - what have they achieved? There are regular time jumps like this which pulled me out of the story and made it seem flatter than I'd like. 

But overall it is a singular book which pushes a lot of buttons, forces the reader to confront young women on the margins whose teenage decisions dictate their entire lives for the worse, and root for those who have no fucking clue what they're doing, but dammit they're trying to make a difference.