All The Things She Said (named after the *very* memorable 2002 song by t.A.T.u) is an exploration of 21st century queer culture and shows how lesbian and bi culture has started to infiltrate the mainstream.

So first, the good bits:

I loved the author's writing style.  Factual, but conversational, like you're having a chat with a mate and they're telling you about her specialist subject, but not in a patronising way.  I think sometimes journalism skills don't translate into book-writing skills, but in this case they did.

It was super inclusive and included conversations with trans and NB folk.  Yes, please.  More of this.

Also, that it focuses on UK queer culture.  There is not enough of this around.  Americans are lovely, but I'm not American and their mainstream culture and queer culture is just different from ours so this was really refreshing to read.

OK, so I do not understand the author's obsession with mullets.  Seriously?  Mullets??  The impression I got was that mullets are this ubiquitous must-have style for the modern lesbian.  Well, I'm here to tell you that it's not!  I'm as old as dirt and I can remember Pat Sharp's scary mullet on Art Attack in the eighties; it wasn't a good look then and I don't care how many hot women decide to go 'business up top, party at the back' - it will never be a good look.

The only thing that stopped this being a five star read was that the viewpoint it was written from was purely personal.  And I totally get why this is - there are as many experiences of queer culture as there are queer people so to cover everyone's experience would have been impossible.  However, I thought from the blurb that this would be written from a broader point of view.  The author's experiences are very different from my own, so ultimately I didn't find myself going 'Yes yes!  Me too!' as I was reading, like at all, (see above re. mullets).

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and Netgalley for a review copy of this book.

4 stars