A novel for anyone who has loved and lost, and lived to tell the tale.
As a young woman boxes up her ex-boyfriend's belongings and prepares to see him one last time, she wonders where it all went wrong, and whether it was ever right to begin with. Burdened with a broken heart, she asks herself the age-old question . . . is love really worth it?
Out of Love is a bittersweet romance told in reverse. Beginning at the end of a relationship, each chapter takes us further back in time, weaving together an already unravelled tapestry, from tragic break-up to magical first kiss.
In this dazzling debut Hazel Hayes performs a post-mortem on love, tenderly but unapologetically exploring every angle, from the heights of joy to the depths of grief, and all the madness and mundanity in between. This is a modern story with the heart of a classic: truthful, tragic and ultimately full of hope.
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['Cup of tea?']***
(@unbounders, 11 June 2020, 384 pages, e-book, #ARC from the publisher via @annecater and voluntarily reviewed, #BlogTour 18 June via #RandomThingsTours)
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I loved this book so much. As a lesbian / gay women / queer lady I didn't think a heterosexual love story would affect me so much. But it did. This is a fantastic debut and I can't wait to see how the author shreds my heart with her second novel. What makes this stand out from other books that use similar themes is the fact it's told in reverse, opening with the end of a relationship them moving back to how it all started and gradually showing the events that led to the moment everything fell apart. Can I just say how much I hated Theo? He's a douche-bag. He treats the narrator with such cold disdain for so long, disappearing on her and shutting her out, I'm staggered she stayed with him as long as she did. I'd have kicked his sorry ass to the kerb long ago. This made me laugh and cry and shot and rage, often at the same time. What a brilliant book!
