What A Time To Be Alive by Jenny Mustard: The Book That Made Me Think About Friendship, Growing Up & Finding Peace

 There are books that entertain you for a few hours.

And then there are books that make you stop somewhere in the middle of reading and think about your own life.

Jenny Mustard's What A Time To Be Alive felt like the second kind for me.

The book follows Sickan, a 21-year-old young woman who leaves her small town in southern Sweden to attend Stockholm University. She arrives with very little money, very little experience and, most importantly, very little experience of belonging.

                                                      

After a lonely childhood, Stockholm is supposed to be her fresh start.

A chance to make friends.

A chance to experience love.

A chance to become the person she thinks she should have already been.

And that is what makes this book so interesting. It isn't simply a story about romance or university life. It is about what happens when you enter a new stage of life and suddenly realise that you are still trying to figure out who you are.

The part of the story I connected with most: friendship

If I had to choose one thing that stayed with me after reading this book, it would be friendship.

Not the casual kind of friendship where you meet someone, talk for a while and eventually lose touch.

I'm talking about that very specific friendship where another girl slowly becomes your person.

Your first best friend.

Someone with whom you discover a version of yourself that you didn't know existed.

I loved that the story gives importance to Sickan finding friends and finally experiencing the feeling of being included. The publisher's description itself describes the importance of her first friendships and the feeling of safety she begins to find with them.

And that made me think about my own experience of friendship.

There is something incredibly special about finding your girl best friend while you are growing up.

You don't just share conversations.

You share phases.

You see each other changing.

You know the awkward versions of each other.

You know the dreams that existed before they became plans.

You know the things that family members might not necessarily understand.

And sometimes, without even realising it, that friendship becomes a small place of peace.

Sometimes we find peace outside our family

This was another thought I kept returning to while reading.

We often grow up believing that family should be the place where we find everything.

Love.

Comfort.

Understanding.

Security.

And family can absolutely be all of those things.

But I don't think it means that every emotional need has to be fulfilled by family.

Sometimes a friend understands a part of you that your family simply cannot see.

Sometimes you can tell a friend something you have never been able to explain at home.

Sometimes you laugh differently with your friends.

Sometimes you become more yourself around them.

And sometimes, when life feels overwhelming, sitting with the right friend can create a strange kind of peace.

Not because they solve your problems.

But because for a few hours, you don't have to carry everything alone.

That is one of the reasons the friendship element of this book felt particularly personal to me.

Growing up isn't always about becoming independent

One of the things I appreciate about coming-of-age stories is that they challenge the idea that growing up means suddenly knowing what you're doing.

It doesn't.

Sometimes growing up means:

• making mistakes you didn't expect to make
• discovering what kind of people make you feel safe
• learning what you actually want
• figuring out what you don't want
• experiencing love for the first time
• losing parts of yourself while trying to fit in
• and eventually asking whether being accepted is worth changing who you are

Sickan arrives in Stockholm determined to experience the life she feels she missed.

She wants to catch up.

She wants to be normal.

She wants friendship, intimacy, love and all the experiences that seem to come naturally to everyone else.

But the more she experiences, the more complicated that desire becomes.

The book ultimately asks a fascinating question: how much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice simply to fit in?

That question stayed with me.

Because growing up sometimes means realising that fitting in and belonging are not necessarily the same thing.

I loved the imperfectness of the relationships

Another thing I appreciated is that the relationships in this book don't feel completely polished.

People make mistakes.

People hurt each other.

People want contradictory things.

People sometimes behave selfishly.

And yet, they still care.

That feels much closer to real life than the perfectly written friendships and romances we often see in stories.

The book explores friendship, sex, love, loneliness, class and the complicated experience of young womanhood. But underneath all of those themes is something very human: the desire to be wanted and accepted.

A few lines and ideas I carried with me

Rather than giving away long passages from the book, these are the short phrases and ideas that stood out to me while reading:

“firsts”

The book is full of first experiences — first friendships, first parties, first love, first betrayals and first real encounters with adulthood.

And perhaps that is what makes the story feel so tender.

When you are experiencing something for the first time, even a small event can feel enormous.

“to simply be normal”

This idea really captures Sickan's emotional journey.

How often do we look at other people and assume that everyone else knows how to live except us?

Everyone seems to know how to make friends.

How to date.

How to behave.

How to belong.

And we quietly wonder, Why don't I know how to do this?

The book made me think about how exhausting it can be to constantly compare your life to an imagined version of “normal.”

The idea of sacrificing yourself to fit in

This was probably the question I found most powerful.

How much of yourself should you change to be accepted?

There is a difference between growing and performing.

Growing means discovering yourself.

Performing means becoming whatever you think other people want.

And sometimes those two things look very similar from the outside.

My favourite part: the feeling of finding your people

If I had to describe why I would recommend this book in one sentence, I would say:

Read it if you've ever felt like you arrived late to your own life.

If you've ever watched other people make friends effortlessly while you wondered how they did it...

If you've ever wanted a best friend who really gets you...

If you've ever felt lonely even while surrounded by people...

If you've ever entered a new phase of life hoping you could become a completely new version of yourself...

I think you might understand Sickan.

And personally, the friendship aspect is what made the story stay with me.

Because finding your best friend can be one of the quietest but most important milestones of growing up.

You don't always realise how much that person is changing your life while it is happening.

You are simply talking.

Walking.

Sharing secrets.

Laughing at things nobody else would understand.

Growing up together.

And one day you realise:

This person became home in a completely different way.

What I think this book is really about

At first glance, What A Time To Be Alive might look like a coming-of-age story about university, romance and discovering adulthood.

And it is.

But for me, it became a story about something deeper:

belonging.

The desire to be chosen.

The fear of being different.

The comfort of friendship.

The confusion of first love.

The loneliness that can exist even when your life appears full.

And the gradual understanding that becoming yourself is probably more important than becoming the person you think everyone else wants you to be.

Jenny Mustard writes about youth in a way that allows the mundane and the emotionally complicated to exist together. The book has been described as a story about class, loneliness and young womanhood, but also as a story of those defining first experiences that shape us.

Would I recommend it?

Yes — especially if you enjoy character-driven coming-of-age fiction.

I would recommend it if you like books about:

📖 Female friendship
📖 Growing up
📖 Loneliness and belonging
📖 First love
📖 University life
📖 Finding yourself
📖 Complicated relationships
📖 Young womanhood
📖 Books that make you reflect on your own life

It is not the kind of book I would recommend only because of the romance.

For me, the friendships and Sickan's search for belonging are much more interesting.

And perhaps that is why the book feels so relatable.

Because growing up isn't just about finding romantic love.

Sometimes it is about finding the friend who sits beside you while you figure everything else out.

Final thought

There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from feeling like everyone else has received a manual for life except you.

And there is a particular kind of happiness that comes from finding someone who makes you realise you don't need a manual.

You just need someone who understands.

That is what I took away from What A Time To Be Alive.

Sometimes growing up means finding yourself.
Sometimes it means losing yourself for a little while.
And sometimes, it means finding a friend who helps you become yourself again.

🛍️ If this sounds like your kind of book, you can check it out on Amazon through my affiliate link:https://link.amazon/B0iSwaUyM

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