How to Fall in Love

by Cecelia Ahern

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Generally I’m not a big fan of chick-lit kind of stuff, or anything with a pink cover. I picked this, pretty much at random, while looking for something light-hearted to listen to as an audiobook. The last audiobook I heard had an American narrator who grated on my ears very quickly and I thought an Irish accent would be much softer and easier to listen to (and it was). Also that cover is definitely blue.

I was expecting something in the lightweight romance department but got a book that began with the main character getting tangled up in trying to prevent two suicide attempts… not quite what I had anticipated. There’s a lot of funny stuff here though, and a good chunk of the book is little more than farce. The serious undertone of suicide mostly gets left behind but when it reappears it lifts up the story (or lowers it depending on your viewpoint I guess). I was a little worried that the author was going to tie up all the sadness into an obvious big cheery happy ending - and she did - but I was just about willing to believe in it by then.

So, entertaining and not entirely mindless, which sounds like damning with faint praise, but it was pretty much what I was looking for.