P.S. I Hate You by Sophie Ranald Published by Bookouture Pages: 287
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Marriage: Hanging by a thread.
Sex life: Dead on arrival.
Alcohol: Essential.Abbie has been with Matt for twenty years. That’s 7,305 days, not that she’s counting.
Ever since Matt saved Abbie from a pigeon when they were seventeen, they were meant to be. But fast forward, and their happy ever after is light on the happy.
Their sex life is officially extinct, Abbie’s lingerie is officially dusty, and Matt officially doesn’t know how to use the dishwasher.Hoping it’s just a phase – aka the longest dry spell on record – it’s time to initiate Operation Memory Lane. Maybe they can spice things up by recreating their first date (Nando’s fixes everything), their first holiday (getting jiggy on the beach), and even their wedding.
But revisiting the past isn’t always plain sailing… Abbie didn’t bank on her secret coming to light – the one she’s kept for two decades. And she had no idea that Matt’s been hiding something from her too.
Can they get their spark back? Or is Operation Memory Lane a sure-fire way to blow up their marriage, leaving Abbie single, terrified to mingle, and with a drawer of dusty underwear for company?
This uplifting and totally addictive page-turner will give you All. The. Feels! If you’ve ever wondered where your mojo went, wanted to start from scratch, or been tempted to wring your husband’s neck, then this feel-good romantic comedy is for you.
It probably takes a lot of courage to write a book that goes on about life way past the ‘Happy-Ever-After’ moment, starting at the point where most romance books fear to tread. But it’s for this reason that I wanted to read Sophie Ranald’s take on an ol’ married couple who have gone past the heady feeling of youthful love, into the realities of battered and bruising married life.
There’s nothing in the (somewhat malicious-sounding) title however, that suggests it would fit the storyline at all; instead, Ranald tells the story of Matt and Abbie’s meandering relationship and how it grows over the years (through third-person flashbacks and a first-person present) amidst adversity and Abbie’s frantic attempts to revive what they used to have. And it’s a journey that isn’t a typical one that goes uphill and climaxes at the end with a horrible fight but one that mirrors many real-life relationships: sometimes plodding forward, sometimes halting.
I didn’t exactly find myself laughing throughout as Ranald chooses to focus on more ‘random’ type flashbacks showing their incremental growth with some moments that would make you smile rather than say, significant sexual milestones. But throughout, there’s a sense of rawness that’s never lost and even by the end, we have Matt/Abbie not exactly waltzing into a golden sunset but finding peace enough to move forward despite the unsolved problems they’ve been facing.
I did go into this thinking it would be a ‘hard’ read and wasn’t surprised when I was proven right..since I was actually keen on exploring stories that go past the HEA. Having Matt/Abbie stay the solid couple that Ranald wants them to be by the end and remain still standing despite everything thrown at them…and maybe that’s really the whole point of it all for those who want to see that light at the end of the tunnel.
