February’s book | How to Fall in Love

This month’s book was How to Fall in Love by Cecilia Ahern, one of my favourite authors.

 *Warning; may contain spoilers*

She has just two weeks. Two weeks to teach him how to fall in love – with his own life.

When self-help aficionado, Christine Rose stumbles across Adam Basil at the Ha’penny Bridge in Dublin, little does she know what she’s letting herself in for. Poised and ready to jump, Christine persuades him to step down and in doing so, set herself the challenge of making him love life again before his next birthday – in just two weeks. Spurred on by the worry of what may happen if she fails, Christine sets about a number of wild escapades, grand romantic gestures and late-night outings to ensure Adam sees the true beauty of life.

It’s clear Adam’s in a bad place, with family and relationship problems, but then Christine does too – and the more time she spends with him, the more she realises these similarities. They have both recently split for relationships – Christine was married to Barry, but left him due to being ‘out of love’, while Adam was in a relationship with a woman named Maria which failed after she hooked up with his best friend, on the basis he was ‘boring’ and had ‘changed’.

While Christine is happy to show Adam the joys of being a spontaneous romantic in an attempt for him to win Maria back, is she really happy or is she hoping for that glimmer of hope she’d break his heart again? Of course she wants him to be happy, but can he be happy with her? You have to really fall in love with both characters to understand the story and chemistry.

I loved that each chapter is named as if it were its own self-help book, beginning ‘How To...’ and although the chapters are pretty long (up to 30 pages!), I was engrossed throughout and couldn’t put the book down – not great when reading during my lunch hour. If you’re a fan of Cecilia Ahern, you’ll love this; while it tackles a difficult subject to talk/write about, it was an absolute pleasure to read. And it’s actually made me appreciate life more.