Sweetpea by C. J. Skuse

Format: eBook
Read: August 2025

I picked this one up because I heard about the Sky TV adaptation when Ella Purnell was on the Off Menu podcast. I recommend that episode, she’s a delightful weirdo and had great chemistry with Ed and James. I also had only seen her in American things (Yellowjackets, Fallout) and had no idea she’s English!

Anyway, this book sounded fun. I like a psycho woman, I thought maybe it’d be a little like either A Certain Hunger or My Sister The Serial Killer. It was more like the former with the conscious first-person narration – this is essentially Rhiannon’s diary – but with an even lighter tone. This is a fun book; it’s not trying to be literature, don’t try to get any deeper than the surface! I think A Certain Hunger is a better character study than this, Sweetpea is more interested in pure entertainment.

I did find it fun, on the whole. I enjoyed Rhiannon’s voice and how super British it is. I think if you’re not British or haven’t spent a significant portion of your life in the country, you might be mystified by a good 70% of this book. It’s absolutely soaked in very specific cultural observations and gripes!

However, I did find my interest waning in the second half. It gets a little repetitive, and I also think in the final act Rhiannon’s character becomes inconsistent. There is a “twist” at the end when she tells the truth about something major, when I don’t believe that she would, when she’s an established liar and psychopath. There is nothing for her to gain by telling the truth; it actually leads to more problems.

This book is also very crude and has quite a bit of sex in it. It’s not sexy sex, though; it’s not graphically described for titillation, it’s more perfunctory. There is certainly no romance to be found! I don’t mind crudity but there were some times it was a bit much for my taste. I don’t know if there needed to be quite so much sex in it.

I am intrigued by the Sky adaptation because, certainly, the ethereal Ella Purnell doesn’t fit the physical descriptions of Rhiannon, who is a size 14-16. The trailer also gives off a different vibe to the book and it looks like they have made some plot changes. Certaintly the stuff with the school bully isn’t front and centre in the book, but rather dropped into the tail end of that plot. I think a TV adaption could actually make some improvments, so I’ll see if I can find it if I bother to subscribe to Now TV again at some point.