Thursday 27 December 2012

Review - You Had Me At Hello by Mhairi McFarlane

An excellent debut novel by Mhairi McFarlane

Rachel and Ben were best friends at University.  Totally inseparable, even though she was in a relationship and he had numerous girlfriends and they share such a lot of history between them. 

Years later, when one of Rachel's friends happens to mention that she has seen him, Rachel accidently on purpose bumps into Ben one day.  Seeing him brings all those old feelings back although now Ben is married to Olivia and has a whole new life.   Rachel has just split up from her boyfriend from their University days and is starting a whole new life on her own.

Can they be just friends again, or was there more to their relationship than their friends actually think?

The story swaps between now and then and you get to feel every single one of the emotions of both Ben and Rachel as the story develops and you discover more about their relationship and what they went through in the past. 

I sat and cried, real proper snotty sobs at one point near the end of the book.  I couldn’t put it down and just had to find out how this story was going to end.  I was actually quite surprised at the ending, not what I thought was going to happen!  I loved the characters and the relationships between them all.  Rachel was a brilliant main character and you just had to love Ben. 

Brilliantly written by Mhairi, this really is an excellent debut novel which was an absolute delight to read. 
 
It will be a pleasure to read more of her work and I hope she has lots more books up her sleeve as I shall certainly be looking forward to more from this up and coming author.
Born in Scotland, Mhairi McFarlane has spent a lot of her life explaining how to pronounce her name.  This is her first book and she is now working on her second without trying to get too distracted by TV or the Internet!
 

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