Blog Tour: No Worries If Not – Sophie Galustian

In the spirit of My Mad Fat Diary by Rae Earl and Slug by Hollie Mcnish, No Worries If Not is a relatable coming-of-age story, that explores Soph Galustian’s experiences of poverty, queerness, mental health, grief and community. She recounts her life from childhood, to teens, into adulthood through a mixture of short stories, spoken word, illustrations, and space for the reader to reflect.

This book is for anyone who was raised struggling, anyone who wrestled with coming out, who accidentally killed their childhood pet, who has lost the person closest to them…

Filled with flashbacks to the 2000s/2010s, No Worries If Not is equally for the straights and the gays, the rich and disadvantaged. In this book Soph offers up her experiences and a space to reminisce and laugh at life’s misfortunes.

Soph Galustian is a born-and-bred Mancunian writer and actress of Armenian heritage, who specialises in comedy writing and spoken-word poetry. This is her first book. She is the writer and star of BBC Three comedy threesome Peck ‘Eds. A comedy about the testing moments of growing up as a young, working­class woman in South Manchester. Soph is currently starring in Channel 4’s Everyone Else Burns, a coming-of-age comedy about a Mancunian family and the puritanical Christian sect they are devoted to. This is her first book.

My thoughts: complete with a playlist you can listen to on Spotify, this is the memoir of a writer and actress who grew up very much in the Internet age, she talks about MSN Messenger and Facebook, the mid 00s is very much alive in this funny and at times heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Manchester without much money but with plenty of love and adventure.

Soph (not Sophie unless you’re her passport or mum) has a lot to say on the subject of being young and trying to find your way in the world. She’s gay and struggling to work out how to deal with that. She tries dating boys but that’s really not her thing, and falls in love pretty hard with her friend.

There’s some really sad and dark moments as well, and Soph explores a lot of her emotions through her poetry and drawings, shared throughout her book. There’s a lightness of touch to her writing, the way she chats to the reader, like a friend catching you up on things that makes it readable and relatable.

I can remember the years Soph writes about really well, the quite recent past but being a wee bit older than her, my memories of those years are somewhat different, but I liked the thought of the next generation coming up behind me doing a lot of the same stupid shit I did as a youngster.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own