Don't You Forget About Me - Mhairi McFarlane

Description

You always remember your first love. Don’t you…?

’I loved it! So funny and warm. A delicious read’ Marian Keyes

’Hilarious, warm and life affirming’ Jenny Colgan

It began with four words.

‘I love your laugh. x’

But that was twelve years ago. It really began the day Georgina was fired from The Worst Restaurant in Sheffield (© Tripadvisor) and found The Worst Boyfriend in the World (© Georgina’s best friends) in bed with someone else.

So when her new boss, Lucas McCarthy, turns out to be the boy who wrote those words to her all that time ago, it feels like the start of something.

The only problem? He doesn’t seem to remember Georgina – at all…

Review

It seems like forever since I read a new Mhairi McFarlane book and now it will seem like it again. I loved reading it so much and would have read it in fewer sittings but the eyes aren't what they used to be and started to close down on me.

I've said before that I don't really class Mhairi's books as chick lit and I do now think that she should have a new category of fiction named after her! This latest book shows how her writing has developed into something with so many layers (some I am still uncovering in my mind), so much humour, and yet still with an intensity that leaves you thinking - "I know just how that character feels". She also deals with heavier subjects I've not seen in her writing before. However because by then you know Georgina, it was hard hitting but thought provoking. 

After the first page I didn't think of them as characters anymore, they were alive and well in my world with me and I couldn't wait to get back to them. I did at times despair of the leading lady Georgina or Gog! She really does find herself at the end of things that "aren't her fault" but to all the world they seem as if they are, which results in her being seen as a little ditsy when she's far from that. Unlike in traditional chick lit where I would be thinking "yeah! as if that would happen, it's included for comedic effect" in Mhairi's writing you just know it could have happened. Her "Worst Boyfriend in the world" was a real piece of work and at times I got a little frustrated that I couldn't give him a piece of my mind.

The book starts in the past but then the most refreshing thing about it was that it didn't then flip flop back and forth - in fact at one point I thought I had missed something. But no, we were fast forwarded without a look back and little by little in the present day we discover what happened in the past. Just like books used to be!

There were some brilliant one liners but I would spoil some spectacular moments for you if I mentioned them. Instead I'm going to say that if you want a good read about people you will feel that you could or have met in your day to day life, then this is the book for you.

I'm giving it five out of five stars. My thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins UK for my ARC.