You Are Here

I really enjoyed this story. Easy reading, nice characters, a plot that’s a little stilted but it fits the characters. Marnie is a copy editor who lives alone in London. Michael is a geography teacher in York. They both get invited to a walk along the coast to coast route across the North of England by a mutual friend who is trying to pair them up with other friends. Well, except these two have the book’s narration split between them so, does the match making go to plan?

I’ve said before that if David Nicholls’ books were written by a woman then they’d be filed under romance or chick-lit and they’d get looked down upon there. This is no different. But, like a lot of romance and chick-lit, it’s well written, nicely structured and fun to read. I wasn’t entirely convinced by the realism of some of the walking - the pouring rain and rapidly switching seasons were true to life but Marnie’s ability to walk fifteen miles day after day after barely leaving her flat for years seemed a little suspect to me. She did whinge quite a lot though so that brought the realism back! Sometimes the plot points were a little obvious but I liked the day by day structure of the narrative and, without spoiling anything I hope, the ending wasn’t quite what I expected and that was a good thing.

Altogether a quick fun read. No complaints other than I’d quite like a “what happened next” follow-up.