Review: "Love, Rosie" by Cecilia Ahern

Sometimes you have to look at life in a whole new way... From the bestselling author of PS, I Love You comes a delightfully enchanting novel about what happens when two people who are meant to be together just can't seem to get it right. Rosie and Alex are destined for one another, and everyone seems to know it but them. Best friends since childhood, their relationship gets closer by the day, until Alex gets the news that his family is leaving Dublin and moving to Boston. At 17, Rosie and Alex have just started to see each other in a more romantic light. Devastated, the two make plans for Rosie to apply to colleges in the U.S. She gets into Boston University, Alex gets into Harvard, and everything is falling into place, when on the eve of her departure, Rosie gets news that will change their lives forever: She's pregnant by a boy she'd gone out with while on the rebound from Alex. Her dreams for college, Alex, and a glamorous career dashed, Rosie stays in Dublin to become a single mother, while Alex pursues a medical career and a new love in Boston. But destiny is a funny thing, and in this novel, structured as a series of clever e-mails, letters, notes, and a trail of missed opportunities, Alex and Rosie find out that fate isn't done with them yet.

Thanks to Hachette Books via Netgalley for the free review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

So, let me start off by saying I liked this book, I really did. Unfortunately, I expected to love it, so I was a bit let down by the fact that I didn't. 

In the end, it was just an okay read for me.

First of all, I didn't really love the format. Sometimes it was a bit confusing. Other times I felt like I wasn't getting enough information. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but the whole letter writing/card sending/email thing didn't work for me. I would have preferred a more traditional style of story telling in this case, because although we get a decent glimpse inside Rosie's brain, she's the only one I felt any attachment to. Rosie often frustrated me to the extreme, so it would have been nice to feel some connection to Alex, or Ruby, or any of the other characters in the book, just to give me a break from the constant Rosie-ness of it all. 

Aside from the lack of connection to the characters, I also felt the book dragged on too long. Seriously, by the time it's all said and done, we're talking about forty some odd years of letter writing! I wanted to scream, "Come on, Rosie and Alex! Get your crap together and figure it out already!" I guess I was losing patience, you could say.

However, there were some extremely funny moments! The one that comes to mind is when Rosie meets some thugish men at a pub. I haven't seen the movie version yet, but I'm crossing my fingers that this is one incident that gets translated to the big screen, because it had me in stitches!

All in all, I am glad to have read this book, and I would like to read more by this author. I also have big hopes for the movie version, because, hello? Sam Claflin, anyone?

My rating: 3.5 stars