I enjoyed this book and give it 3.5stars. It’s better than the 3 star books I have read but not quite as good as the 4 star books. It was absolutely hilarious in parts and had me laughing out loud. Not sure I was fully on board with the plot, a mum version of The Hangover, where the hen do does not ho to plan and they have to fix what happened the morning after the night before. There are some great plot twists that I wasn’t expecting! This was an easy summer read, I think I would enjoyed it more had I been reading on a hot beach rather than a wet gloomy North West town!! Cara Carmichael’s bestie is getting hitched; but before the wedding comes the all-important hen do. For Cara, this means a long weekend of escapism. A chance to forget about her messy divorce, explosive family feud and monotonous 9-5, but even on holiday, your past has a way of catching up with you…’ The actual inspiration for Mother Hens was born of my own desire to ditch my kids for a weekend and go crazy with my friends in Ibiza, because we would all talk about it in the mum chat.”

Sophie creates comedy content about parenting on her Tired 'N Tested social media accounts. (Image: Publicity Picture) For more summer reading inspiration, take a look at our review of ‘ Champagne at Seven!‘ HOW TO ENTER THE MOTHER HENS BOOK GIVEAWAY

What's the most important lesson you've learned as a parent?

Fast forward 2 years and it is her best fiends hen do in Ibiza. Still in a downward spiral, her friends try their best to fear her up for the mother of all hen dos. Propelled towards internet stardom in 2017 for a mum parody of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’, in just a few years her riotous representation of modern day ‘mumming’ has earned her cult status with over 1.25 million adoring social media fans. Sophie is loved for her down-to-earth, no holds-barred approach to parenting and has had numerous viral videos – including her popular 90s makeover which has been viewed more than 16 million times. She became a household name after her MC Hammer parody ‘Can’t Teach This’ was watched all over the world due its hilarious and very relevant representation of homeschooling during the current pandemic. It's funny actually, even though I've had two kids before, there’s this immediate realisation of knowing that you're pregnant and then all the googling that you do! I'm like, oh, my god, what kind of fruit is it? I don't know why it's always fruit. And fruit you've never heard or like an heirloom tomato. I’d tell Steve and he's like, “well how big is that” and I go “I don’t know I’ve no idea what it is, we only get cherry tomatoes!”

It did, however, change my outlook on my pregnancy. After my miscarriage and I fell pregnant again it hugely affected my experience. I was really anxious throughout the pregnancy and I hadn’t felt like that first time round. I just couldn’t ease into it.Sophie’s first fiction title has a lot going on- cheating husbands, running from a cult, drug dealers, a murder… but somehow Sophie brings it all together with her characteristic witty and zany sense of humour. Prepare for puns galore! This is a story about friendship and doing whatever it takes to get a friend out of a dark time in their lives. I immediately detested Dom (the weasel) and Cara’s mother is a piece of work too (don’t get me started about Cara’s younger stepsister CA chaotic story that pulls at all the emotions, Sophie’s Mother Hens is the Mums on Tour version of the Inbetweeners. NGL, I was ready to go into full Lorena Bobbitt mode in the first part of the story… I wanted to take Dirty Dom OUT! Don’t even get me started on the other two! (*mumbles* Must think of your blood pressure, Laura!) I’m not expecting anyone to come away feeling like they’ve learnt anything from my book, that’s not what it’s about. I would like people to come away feeling maybe 10% better about their own parenting abilities and choices. Hopefully they can read it and think ‘yeah, that happened to me too’ or ‘yeah, I felt really alone and isolated after I had a baby’.

I make myself laugh because I've always said to myself, if I ever have another baby, I'm going to be so sensible. I'm going to eat all of my leafy greens. I'm going to be super healthy and on top of my game because I know that's going to help me after the baby's born. No, I've lived a life of beige food. My kids were scared'... Family day out ruined after 'abusive' cyclist spits on car window and punches wing mirrorMy mouth dropped open, with an audible ‘No way! I didn’t see that coming!’. The epilogue is a must read, as it puts a lot of problems faced in the book to bed, literally. You will run through a range of emotions reading the book, with more emphasis on laughing out loud. So becareful where you choose to read the book!

I feel like I need to give the new baby some attention. Because I don’t recommend writing the book when pregnant: I went into labour early with him, so I had to finish the book after he was born,” she says. Yeah, so this is completely different, it’s fictional and honestly, the plot keeps changing as I write it! It's essentially about a group of mums who are friends. It’s not necessarily about parenting as such, it's actually about removing mums from their day to day life and putting them into a situation where they wouldn't normally be. It's about finding their identities or I suppose rediscovering the identities that they had before kids. They end up in Ibiza on a hen party, some things go a little bit wrong, it might be a little bit murdery in places as well. So it's very removed from what I've done before. I’ve got a deadline at the end of the month for the first draft so I’m constantly typing away at the moment and I’ve got until the end of August to do all the editing, and then baby is due in the middle of September, so I’ve probably got about 10 days maternity leave. What's the most important lesson you've learned as a parent?

Lazy days, crazy nights and child-free hangovers sound like hedonistic heaven – but it turns out you can get into a hell of a lot of trouble on the party island where rules are meant to be broken. And then someone suggested taking it to the next level by doing a vlog. I was like I can't do that and then I had this idea of a parenting parody. I went from never wanting to appear in front of a camera to a full-on music video.