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Don't Let it Break You, Honey: Longlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction
Cast in a feature film at the age of eighteen, Jenny Evans was on the cusp of something extraordinary; a route out of her hometown, a future of promise. But the new world she was exploring crumbled around her when she was assaulted at a party by a high-profile figure.
Jenny reported this crime to the police when she became aware of other allegations of violence against The Famous Man. Shortly after doing so, details of what she had experienced were printed in a tabloid newspaper.
Jenny trained as a journalist herself to try to find out how this happened. In the aftermath of devastation, she picked up the pieces and fought back against the systems that caused her harm. Her investigation helped expose the jaw-dropping press abuse and police corruption we now call the 'phone-hacking scandal'.
Now training as a lawyer, Jenny is still working to fight for justice in a system that so horrifically fails its victims.
Don't Let it Break You, Honey is a a personal, fiercely compelling account of power—who holds it, who wields it, who is silenced in the process. It asks urgent questions about fame, justice, and the institutions we have no choice but to trust, while offering something even more hope.
Because this is, above all, a story about resilience. About finding your voice when the world wants to silence you. And refusing to let them win.
Jenny reported this crime to the police when she became aware of other allegations of violence against The Famous Man. Shortly after doing so, details of what she had experienced were printed in a tabloid newspaper.
Jenny trained as a journalist herself to try to find out how this happened. In the aftermath of devastation, she picked up the pieces and fought back against the systems that caused her harm. Her investigation helped expose the jaw-dropping press abuse and police corruption we now call the 'phone-hacking scandal'.
Now training as a lawyer, Jenny is still working to fight for justice in a system that so horrifically fails its victims.
Don't Let it Break You, Honey is a a personal, fiercely compelling account of power—who holds it, who wields it, who is silenced in the process. It asks urgent questions about fame, justice, and the institutions we have no choice but to trust, while offering something even more hope.
Because this is, above all, a story about resilience. About finding your voice when the world wants to silence you. And refusing to let them win.
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Published July 3, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 27, 2026
Every year since the Women's prize for Non fiction was started I start reading the long list with relish. Over the last 2 years I have read so many great books as a result but both previous years I have read a book and known instinctively it was 9or at least should be the) the winner. Doppelganger by Naomi Klein and then The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke. Both went onto to win. This year, it is early in my reading but I have a sneaky feeling that I just read or in this case listened to the winner in the form of this book.
This is a testament to investigatory journalism but it is also a testament to Jenny Evans determination and tenacity in the face of horrific treatment by both her attacker and then by the tabloid press that effectively destroyed her chance of ever getting justice and allowed a violent sex offender to continue on offending just because he was a 'famous man'.
The writing is brilliant. There was a not a moment when I found my attention waning. There were moments, many of them, when I was enraged for the author and for all women who live in a world were a few super rich powerful men control so much. The corruption between the Met police force, the tabloid media and government was I firmly believe still is rife. The Met Police, despite all their claims, remains institutionally corrupt and barely fit for use. This book exposes that no uncertain terms and honestly it a book I think everyone should read especially if you ever buy or read a tabloid paper. Maybe this book will make you think twice about that.
Will this book win? We shall see but I predict that it will definitely get short listed. One of the things the prize says is that it is looking for books that will continue to be read in the future and this book fits that description perfectly. It is a searing account of the phone hacking scandal and the corruption that not only led to it but allowed it to happen and even now prevents real answers or justice being achieved.
Amazing work Jenny Evans. I hope in some small way writing this helped you to find a tiny bit of peace
This is a testament to investigatory journalism but it is also a testament to Jenny Evans determination and tenacity in the face of horrific treatment by both her attacker and then by the tabloid press that effectively destroyed her chance of ever getting justice and allowed a violent sex offender to continue on offending just because he was a 'famous man'.
The writing is brilliant. There was a not a moment when I found my attention waning. There were moments, many of them, when I was enraged for the author and for all women who live in a world were a few super rich powerful men control so much. The corruption between the Met police force, the tabloid media and government was I firmly believe still is rife. The Met Police, despite all their claims, remains institutionally corrupt and barely fit for use. This book exposes that no uncertain terms and honestly it a book I think everyone should read especially if you ever buy or read a tabloid paper. Maybe this book will make you think twice about that.
Will this book win? We shall see but I predict that it will definitely get short listed. One of the things the prize says is that it is looking for books that will continue to be read in the future and this book fits that description perfectly. It is a searing account of the phone hacking scandal and the corruption that not only led to it but allowed it to happen and even now prevents real answers or justice being achieved.
Amazing work Jenny Evans. I hope in some small way writing this helped you to find a tiny bit of peace
March 4, 2026
Nominacja do Women's Prize for Non-fiction. Jest to memoirowa opowieść o napaści, męskiej dominacji, ale przede wszystkim walce o wiedzę i prawdę. Pewien znany mężczyzna (Jenny Evans pisze o nim jako The Famous Man, nigdzie nie nazywa go z imienia i nazwiska, żeby - jak pisze na końcu - nie zostać oskarżoną o zniesławienie) dokonał napaści sek$ualnej na Evans, gdy ta miała 19 lat. Kilka lat później Evans - motywowana innymi oskarżeniami wobec tego znanego faceta - zdecydowała się powiedzieć o tym zdarzeniu policji. Sprawa szybko została zamieciona pod dywan, a wszystkie informacje (poufne, bo przecież dostępne wyłącznie policji) zostały opublikowane w dwóch dużych pismach. Po latach Evans zdecydowała się dowiedzieć, kto stoi za przeciekami do prasy, skończyła studia dziennikarskie i weszła w mozolne śledztwo, które ujawniło wielkie przekręty, nielegalne triki i absolutnie haniebne praktyki medialne. I "Don't Let It Break You, Honey" (cytat z Mayi Angelou, którą autorka spotkała lata temu) jest relacją z tego właśnie śledztwa.
Co uważam? Bliżej tej książce do memoiru niż do reportażu ze śledztwa. We fragmentach memoirowych książkę Evans czyta się sprawnie, nie poddaje ona swoich wspomnień literackiej stylizacji i powstrzymuje się od upiększania narracji. Niestety nie uniknęła też banałów i powtórzeń (np. co drugi rozdział kończony retorycznym pytanie w stylu "i co teraz?", "czy kiedykolwiek poznam prawdę", "czy to się dzieje naprawdę?" itp.). Uważam też, że część związana ze śledztwem jest zbyt detalistyczna i zagmatwana, a styl Evans nie ułatwia połapania się w osobach, chronologii zdarzeń, poszczególnych krokach. W pewnym momencie przestałam aktywnie i ze zrozumieniem śledzić to reporterskie dochodzenie, a wyczekiwałam końca i podsumowania, ujmując rzecz prosto.
Początkowo oceniłam tę książkę na 4/5, ale po kilku dniach obniżam ocenę do 3/5 z zaznaczeniem, że jest to ocena książki, nie samej historii Evans.
Co uważam? Bliżej tej książce do memoiru niż do reportażu ze śledztwa. We fragmentach memoirowych książkę Evans czyta się sprawnie, nie poddaje ona swoich wspomnień literackiej stylizacji i powstrzymuje się od upiększania narracji. Niestety nie uniknęła też banałów i powtórzeń (np. co drugi rozdział kończony retorycznym pytanie w stylu "i co teraz?", "czy kiedykolwiek poznam prawdę", "czy to się dzieje naprawdę?" itp.). Uważam też, że część związana ze śledztwem jest zbyt detalistyczna i zagmatwana, a styl Evans nie ułatwia połapania się w osobach, chronologii zdarzeń, poszczególnych krokach. W pewnym momencie przestałam aktywnie i ze zrozumieniem śledzić to reporterskie dochodzenie, a wyczekiwałam końca i podsumowania, ujmując rzecz prosto.
Początkowo oceniłam tę książkę na 4/5, ale po kilku dniach obniżam ocenę do 3/5 z zaznaczeniem, że jest to ocena książki, nie samej historii Evans.
July 22, 2025
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ such an important read, highly recommend!
March 3, 2026
This powerful memoir that recounts Jenny Evan’s experience of sexual assault and the profound institutional failures that followed. After reporting the crime, Evans discovered that confidential details from her case had been leaked to the press, intensifying her trauma and exposing her to public scrutiny. Refusing to remain silent, she began investigating how her private information had been mishandled, uncovering links to police corruption and the wider phone-hacking scandal.
This book holds so much. Told in three parts, we follow first a young girl from Wales who wants to be an actress and is raped by a famous man. She tells us with such emotional clarity and razor sharp personal inquiry how this made her feel and how she hid. We then learn about how she continued to live, rebuild her life, experienced joy but never lost the inner fesr inside her. One day she opens the newspaper and sees the famius man accused of rape in the tabloids. She then decided to go to the police and report her story, she imagines alongside others. Instead, her story and its intimate details end up in the tabloids without her consent. Fuelled by fear, anger and determination, she does a masters in journalism and starts a career with one focus: to find out how this happend. In the third section of the memoir we then follow her experience piecing together the corruption, hubris and violence in the tabloids and their relstionship with the London police. The memoir therefore shifts from one type of horror to the next, with feeling and clarity cutting so deep in every assertion she makes. A truly brilliant writer has shared her story and her life’s work.
What is captured so beautifully also in this book is the power of friendship, humanity and holding such space and care for others. The way people are there for her and she is there for them, moved me to tears. It is so beautiful and hopeful.
QUOTES
part 1: the breaking
“I took a step back. He knew I would soon hit his coffee table and have nowhere else to go. I was only just realising how far into the deep, dark wood I had accidentally skipped.”
“It is a myth that all sexual assaults result in visisble injury. Visible injury does not denote a more serious crime or a worse experience. It is important to say that. I did sustain phsyical injusry from this assault, though it took me many years to allow myself to remember and to be able to accept this. The famous man took a large hand, put it on my chest and pushed me backwards, which happend both in slow motion and in a flash. Then the other pounced like a wolf. I saw what happend next from above, looking down as if I had died of fright. In the intervening years, it is what I understand to be residual trauma, remnants of images, certain sounds, a sense of fear, that anchor me in the reality that I suffered this at all. Because straight after it happend, a steel trap of denial slammed shut in my mind telling me it did not. Or that maybe something happend, but really it wasnt that bad, so I carried on as normal.”
(after assault)
“I took a room in a basement flat in Madavale, found a job in a bar in Soho and sank to the bottom of a well. It is dark and lonely at the bottom of a well, but most people do not realise that is where you live. You can drink and some and take too many drugs. You can avoid physical contact almost entirely and develop eating issues and give up all your ambitions. You can splash around in a pit of fear and bewilderment at who youve become, because the cold walls around you protect you from having to engage with anything the fuck at all.”
part 2: The fight
“True vicitimhood has very demanding standards.”
“Both offered me a monetary fee to speak exclusively to them. I felt sick. The tabloids were ruthless yet they were powerful and had such reach. Being in proximity to their operations was both frightening and thrilling. What would happen if I broke my silence? How would it feel to finally get to speak?”
“Neil and I had discussed, many times, what we would spend the money on if I decided to sell my story. We were sick of being skint. That unrelenting, mood suppressing negotiation between every little thing in the world you want or need. I had many times chosen food over tampons, tampons ober train fare, slunk through tube barriers behind a commuter with a ticket head bowed and heart racing. Take away coffee and croissant were a luxury. We had envisaged a life free of bank charges for being overdrawn, monthly travelcards for zones 1-6, bread you could cht yourself snd the posh peanut butter. I had thought I might get a new laptop, driving lessons, go on holiday. It was idle chatter. The decision I had made, silence, anonimity, protection for my family was the right one. So when I opened the news of the world that sunny Sunday morning to a double page spread that contained pretty much every detail of my case, much of my private life, some information even my friends didnt know, it was not just exposing. It felt like being robbed. It felt like being stripped, I was violated.”
“Thank goodness I hadnt said more, either to the police or in my house or on the phone. or to anyone. Thank goodness I hadnt risked the exposure that comes with fully trusting.”
“I turned down all that money. I chose to keep my secrets. I felt it was dignified and yet again my dignity has been stolen, yet again I am humiliated.”
“The series producer, a lovely man with grey hair and glasses, came to the weekly meeting. Poor man, I stuck to him like glue. Perhaps he was charmed, perhaps he was exhausted I dont know, but eventually he agrees that yes okay there is some research that might needs doing. If I wanted, I could join his team. Also and this really was amazing, he told me he didn’t believe in using free labour. He offered me a wage of £450 a week. That Sunday I paid for Lizzie’s rosst, then I cried.”
“The producer knew an executive on the foreign affair series, unreported world, so he got me an interview to be a researcher on that show when my contract with him ran out. This is how TV works. I had claimed for myself, a sticky little string of the cobweb and I clung on for dear life.”
“How does it make you feel? I thought about that. Scared. Because? Therapists always ask because instead of why. It apparently asks us to explore our feelings rather than try to explain them. I use it in journalism and friendships all the time, it works.”
Part 3: The Reckoning
crazy insights into news of the world and other tabloid… “They were run on fear”
“Thats when it happend. Hang on a minute. Where are the humiliated people? I wondered to myself. Where are the reporters who were mocked and mistreated and lied to? Where are those who were punished, where are the bullied, the pissed off? Pissed off people like to talk. Tipping up my notes at home, it occured to me that the reasons reports had given for talking could be categorised into 1) they felt like fellow reporters were heing thrown under the bus by cowardly desk editors looking to save their own skin and 2) they had been bullied.”
News of world and police actively work together… vigilante police work done by journalists
“The source had posed as a potential sex worker looking for a job to get this man on tape. The police said hes just had a heart bipass, before that he used to ask new workers for a blow job. The police thought that it was too dangerous to send a police woman in for that reason. So you did vigilante police work in effect because the police had more stringent rules than the newspaper around safety or womens safety. It seemed like it was her turn to properly hesr something for the first time. The paper had allowed her to be unsafe. Her face dropped and I resisted the urge to find a positive spin, choosing instead to sit with her in her sorrow. I felt it too.”
… it was favour for favour… bullying culture and there is alot of power, drugs and sex
“In retrospect, there was a lot of amoral things that we did. I have got morals but. We all have elements of our past that we wish we could change, I offered, there have been times I asked more questions. She seemed to listen to this intently. We sat in silence for a short while.”
“Then find myself sitting up and tipping madly into my laptop. Things like: “If we allow ruthless people unfettered power, which they have acquired through stealing private information and generating fesr and have used that to make money which gives them more power, we loose independence. Not just of the state but also our democracy. This is oligarchy, who runs this country really.” Once these streams of conciousness were out of my system, I might finally drift off. aand the next night Id have to do it again, my gair a birdsnest from tossing and turning, my face hot with adrenaline and fear.”
“But yet again I was scared. When you have been sexually assaulted, the thing that stays with you the longest is the fear. The fesr lodges in your heart like shrapnel, when you realise what is about to happen to you or yoh understand what has happend to you without you knowing. It is a visceral fear, an I might die, of being killed type fear. And somehow regardless of how you might move on, a sliver of it stays.”
This book holds so much. Told in three parts, we follow first a young girl from Wales who wants to be an actress and is raped by a famous man. She tells us with such emotional clarity and razor sharp personal inquiry how this made her feel and how she hid. We then learn about how she continued to live, rebuild her life, experienced joy but never lost the inner fesr inside her. One day she opens the newspaper and sees the famius man accused of rape in the tabloids. She then decided to go to the police and report her story, she imagines alongside others. Instead, her story and its intimate details end up in the tabloids without her consent. Fuelled by fear, anger and determination, she does a masters in journalism and starts a career with one focus: to find out how this happend. In the third section of the memoir we then follow her experience piecing together the corruption, hubris and violence in the tabloids and their relstionship with the London police. The memoir therefore shifts from one type of horror to the next, with feeling and clarity cutting so deep in every assertion she makes. A truly brilliant writer has shared her story and her life’s work.
What is captured so beautifully also in this book is the power of friendship, humanity and holding such space and care for others. The way people are there for her and she is there for them, moved me to tears. It is so beautiful and hopeful.
QUOTES
part 1: the breaking
“I took a step back. He knew I would soon hit his coffee table and have nowhere else to go. I was only just realising how far into the deep, dark wood I had accidentally skipped.”
“It is a myth that all sexual assaults result in visisble injury. Visible injury does not denote a more serious crime or a worse experience. It is important to say that. I did sustain phsyical injusry from this assault, though it took me many years to allow myself to remember and to be able to accept this. The famous man took a large hand, put it on my chest and pushed me backwards, which happend both in slow motion and in a flash. Then the other pounced like a wolf. I saw what happend next from above, looking down as if I had died of fright. In the intervening years, it is what I understand to be residual trauma, remnants of images, certain sounds, a sense of fear, that anchor me in the reality that I suffered this at all. Because straight after it happend, a steel trap of denial slammed shut in my mind telling me it did not. Or that maybe something happend, but really it wasnt that bad, so I carried on as normal.”
(after assault)
“I took a room in a basement flat in Madavale, found a job in a bar in Soho and sank to the bottom of a well. It is dark and lonely at the bottom of a well, but most people do not realise that is where you live. You can drink and some and take too many drugs. You can avoid physical contact almost entirely and develop eating issues and give up all your ambitions. You can splash around in a pit of fear and bewilderment at who youve become, because the cold walls around you protect you from having to engage with anything the fuck at all.”
part 2: The fight
“True vicitimhood has very demanding standards.”
“Both offered me a monetary fee to speak exclusively to them. I felt sick. The tabloids were ruthless yet they were powerful and had such reach. Being in proximity to their operations was both frightening and thrilling. What would happen if I broke my silence? How would it feel to finally get to speak?”
“Neil and I had discussed, many times, what we would spend the money on if I decided to sell my story. We were sick of being skint. That unrelenting, mood suppressing negotiation between every little thing in the world you want or need. I had many times chosen food over tampons, tampons ober train fare, slunk through tube barriers behind a commuter with a ticket head bowed and heart racing. Take away coffee and croissant were a luxury. We had envisaged a life free of bank charges for being overdrawn, monthly travelcards for zones 1-6, bread you could cht yourself snd the posh peanut butter. I had thought I might get a new laptop, driving lessons, go on holiday. It was idle chatter. The decision I had made, silence, anonimity, protection for my family was the right one. So when I opened the news of the world that sunny Sunday morning to a double page spread that contained pretty much every detail of my case, much of my private life, some information even my friends didnt know, it was not just exposing. It felt like being robbed. It felt like being stripped, I was violated.”
“Thank goodness I hadnt said more, either to the police or in my house or on the phone. or to anyone. Thank goodness I hadnt risked the exposure that comes with fully trusting.”
“I turned down all that money. I chose to keep my secrets. I felt it was dignified and yet again my dignity has been stolen, yet again I am humiliated.”
“The series producer, a lovely man with grey hair and glasses, came to the weekly meeting. Poor man, I stuck to him like glue. Perhaps he was charmed, perhaps he was exhausted I dont know, but eventually he agrees that yes okay there is some research that might needs doing. If I wanted, I could join his team. Also and this really was amazing, he told me he didn’t believe in using free labour. He offered me a wage of £450 a week. That Sunday I paid for Lizzie’s rosst, then I cried.”
“The producer knew an executive on the foreign affair series, unreported world, so he got me an interview to be a researcher on that show when my contract with him ran out. This is how TV works. I had claimed for myself, a sticky little string of the cobweb and I clung on for dear life.”
“How does it make you feel? I thought about that. Scared. Because? Therapists always ask because instead of why. It apparently asks us to explore our feelings rather than try to explain them. I use it in journalism and friendships all the time, it works.”
Part 3: The Reckoning
crazy insights into news of the world and other tabloid… “They were run on fear”
“Thats when it happend. Hang on a minute. Where are the humiliated people? I wondered to myself. Where are the reporters who were mocked and mistreated and lied to? Where are those who were punished, where are the bullied, the pissed off? Pissed off people like to talk. Tipping up my notes at home, it occured to me that the reasons reports had given for talking could be categorised into 1) they felt like fellow reporters were heing thrown under the bus by cowardly desk editors looking to save their own skin and 2) they had been bullied.”
News of world and police actively work together… vigilante police work done by journalists
“The source had posed as a potential sex worker looking for a job to get this man on tape. The police said hes just had a heart bipass, before that he used to ask new workers for a blow job. The police thought that it was too dangerous to send a police woman in for that reason. So you did vigilante police work in effect because the police had more stringent rules than the newspaper around safety or womens safety. It seemed like it was her turn to properly hesr something for the first time. The paper had allowed her to be unsafe. Her face dropped and I resisted the urge to find a positive spin, choosing instead to sit with her in her sorrow. I felt it too.”
… it was favour for favour… bullying culture and there is alot of power, drugs and sex
“In retrospect, there was a lot of amoral things that we did. I have got morals but. We all have elements of our past that we wish we could change, I offered, there have been times I asked more questions. She seemed to listen to this intently. We sat in silence for a short while.”
“Then find myself sitting up and tipping madly into my laptop. Things like: “If we allow ruthless people unfettered power, which they have acquired through stealing private information and generating fesr and have used that to make money which gives them more power, we loose independence. Not just of the state but also our democracy. This is oligarchy, who runs this country really.” Once these streams of conciousness were out of my system, I might finally drift off. aand the next night Id have to do it again, my gair a birdsnest from tossing and turning, my face hot with adrenaline and fear.”
“But yet again I was scared. When you have been sexually assaulted, the thing that stays with you the longest is the fear. The fesr lodges in your heart like shrapnel, when you realise what is about to happen to you or yoh understand what has happend to you without you knowing. It is a visceral fear, an I might die, of being killed type fear. And somehow regardless of how you might move on, a sliver of it stays.”
July 27, 2025
This book was astonishing - shocking, moving and ultimately filled with hope. What reassurance that good l, brave people exist.
March 3, 2026
I loved the homage to Gisele Pelicot's book in the author's note, a woman whose book I have recently read. So important are both books. I wasn't sure what to expect from this, but I wasn't expecting a full-on memoir, I thought it would be "just" about the thing. But in hindsight, it really did add a bit of gravitas to the whole story to come by learning about her younger years. The grief she went through as a child and as a young adult, as well as the thing is so moving. I read it in a matter of hours. If you have read books like Gisele's recently you'll know it was very explicit. Jenny hasn't done that here. She's not told us every explicit detail, nor has she hidden it away. This is more than just about her experience. It exposed the whole journalism industry and it is not pretty.
August 2, 2025
A lot of it is extremely frustrating, in a way that’s intended.
August 7, 2025
What a woman
November 23, 2025
I heard the audio book and it’s wonderful. The authors struggle, the raw emotions make it very open and raw. I appreciate the author for being so vulnerable with her audience after so much trauma.
February 22, 2026
A powerful memoir exposing the greed and corruption of powerful men and newspaper companies.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews