*This book is part of my POPSUGAR 2015 Reading Challenge*
Synopsis from Amazon:
A wonderfully warm and heartfelt debut from a stunning new talent. Everyone needs a guardian angel! Some people wait their whole lives to find their soul mates. But not Holly and Gerry. Childhood sweethearts, they could finish each other’s sentences and even when they fought, they laughed. No one could imagine Holly and Gerry without each other. Until the unthinkable happens.
Gerry’s death devastates Holly. But as her 30th birthday looms, Gerry comes back to her. He’s left her a bundle of notes, one for each of the months after his death, gently guiding Holly into her new life without him, each note signed ‘PS, I Love You’. As the notes are gradually opened, and as the year unfolds, Holly is both cheered up and challenged. The man who knows her better than anyone sets out to teach her that life goes on.
With some help from her friends, and her noisy and loving family, Holly finds herself laughing, crying, singing, dancing–and being braver than ever before. Life is for living, she realises–but it always helps if there’s an angel watching over you.
I had mixed feelings about this book. Holly annoyed me a lot but that was because I wanted her to get on with her life and stop being so depressed but obviously her husband had just died so I understood why she was depressed. After a while though, I just wanted to slap her and make her get up and do something with her life. Clearly I’m not that empathetic.
That being said this was still a really good book. Once I got to know Holly as a character and understood her more I began to feel her pain. I cried with her and understood her anger towards her fake friends who stopped calling once her husband died. Additionally, I loved the secondary characters. Her best friends Sharon and Denise were hilarious and supportive and Holly’s family was such an eclectic group of people that I immediately fell in love with them.
My biggest problem with the book was the third-person narration. At times it was a close third-person narration that followed Holly but sometimes it would switch to another character. If a whole chapter was with a different character it was fine but sometimes it would switch mid chapter or even section and sometimes I got confused. In some cases I could see why Cecelia Ahern wrote it this way but most of the time I didn’t like it. I just wanted to stick with Holly.
Overall, I’d say this was a good read. It made me laugh, cry, and question the meaning of life and death. It didn’t end the way I expected it too but thinking back I think the way it ended was just fine. Not perfect but still pretty good. I would definitely recommend it. Don’t watch the movie though. Just by looking at the trailer I can tell it won’t compare to the book.
Favorite Line:
She had been given a wonderful gift: life. Sometimes it was cruelly taken away too soon, but it’s what you did with it that counted, not how long it lasted.
Stars: 4 out of 5. It was pretty good but it wasn’t one of my favorites.
Borrow or Buy: Borrow. I don’t think I would read this again.
Other Reviews
Zakiya N. Jamal 