Evenings and Weekends by Oisin McKenna - Review

I really loved this book and really recommend it! I was made aware of it by Janet, who often shares books that she has liked that are cheap on Kindle on her Instagram. She and I have very similar taste in books, so when this was only 99p I had to get it. That's a couple of months ago now, but I'm really glad I picked it up because I liked it a lot. My friend Sarah, when she saw this photo on Instagram, messaged and said that she didn't like it at all and found all the characters unlikeable. After Janet said it was the best book she read last year I was really intrigued to see what I thought... Sorry Sarah, I loved it!

At its core the book is about three people: Maggie, Ed, and Phil. It is set in the heatwave summer of 2019, in London. Maggie and Ed are a couple, Maggie is pregnant, and they are barely scraping by in London so they are planning to move back to Basildon, where they grew up, to raise the baby. It's Maggie's last day at work before the move. A whale has come up the Thames and is beached, and all of London is talking about it and people keep going to see it. Ed is a courier, cycling all over London every day for little money. His dad died a few years ago, and his mum sits on the street back in Basildon every day, still grieving. Ed's best friend is Callum, who is about to get married to Holly. He is having a stag do with Ed and his dad Steve, but he goes AWOL for a bit so everyone is worried. 

His brother is Phil. Phil is gay and lives in a warehouse squat in London with eleven other people. One of them is Keith, who is in an open relationship with Louis, and who is also seeing Phil. Phil is sort of catching feelings though, but doesn't really know what to do about it. He doesn't like Louis, and he also thinks Keith is maybe using him. The squat is going to throw a party so everyone is getting ready for that.

Phil and Callum's mum, Rosaleen, has just discovered that she has cancer and her prognosis is terminal. She visits London on the Saturday with the intention of telling Phil, but finds she can't. A lot of the books is from her point of view too, about her childhood in Ireland and her friend Pauline, who died. Everyone in the book is very, very queer, except Maggie, who is just very in the scene. I loved how little bits were revealed and how so many people were intertwined with each other. I loved Rosaleen, I thought she was great, and I liked Phil a lot. I feel like I understand Phil. I didn't like Ed and Maggie as much for most of the book but I did really like their ending and thought it worked well. 

The book is about one weekend, that kind of hot city weekend when everyone is dying to get out of work and get to the parties, to the alcohol and the drugs and the dancing. I liked how this was portrayed a lot. I was right there, with these young people, who are connected by years and years of history (Phil and Ed have history too) and a vague sense of wanting more in life.

I'm giving this five out of five. It is an almost perfect book.