Mhairi McFarlane

Book Review – It’s Not Me It’s You by Mhairi McFarlane

Posted on by Libby Price

I have read, loved and blogged about Mhairi McFarlane’s previous two books ‘You Had Me At Hello‘ and ‘Here’s Looking at You‘.  So imagine my excitement when my lovely friend Emily sent me this photograph by text message saying ‘Look what I’ve got’:

It's not me it's you 2

There was an actual squeal of excitement from me – as the publication date isn’t until next month!  But as reported before, Em  has contacts!  She also scored super highly in the friend’s stakes by dropping it round to me as I was packing to leave that afternoon for a transatlantic trip with the husband (another blog post is brewing for that – don’t fear!)

I started reading ‘It’s Not Me It’s You’ in a bar in Manhattan with an ice bucket of pinot grigio and a husband with a flight of beers and the sport on TV – pretty much perfection! And it was the sampler of this book that turned me into a Mhairi McFarlane obsessive fan, so my expectations were high!!

It's not me it's you

This is the blurb from Amazon, just to set the scene for you (which interestingly has changed since my previous blog post when the sampler came out  – and you can currently download the sampler for free for your Kindle – yay!):

“An achingly funny story about how to be your own hero when life pulls the rug out from under your feet. From the author of the bestselling YOU HAD ME AT HELLO
Delia Moss isn’t quite sure where she went wrong.
When she proposed and discovered her boyfriend was sleeping with someone else – she thought it was her fault.
When she realised life would never be the same again – she thought it was her fault.
And when he wanted her back life nothing had changed – Delia started to wonder if perhaps she was not to blame…
From Newcastle to London and back again, with dodgy jobs, eccentric bosses and annoyingly handsome journalists thrown in, Delia must find out where her old self went – and if she can ever get her back.”

And I was not disappointed at all – in fact I think this could be my favourite Mhairi book yet!

There is a love story (a twisting rollercoaster) accompanied by a bit of mystery solving (think grown up Nancy Drew rather than Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison) and all in the style of writing and with perfectly relevant reference points that we’ve come to expect. I really really enjoyed it, and want to be Delia’s friend as she sounds like such a lovely person – normal in a Bridget Jones as a heroine kind of way (but way less annoying!).  Whether you’ve read Mhairi’s other books or not – if you’re a 30 / 40 something female Brit, with a sense of humour, penchant for booze and the occasional potty mouth (that pretty much sums me up!!) you will love this book.

Despite being very kindly sent this uncorrected proof to read – I will most definitely be buying the original, as my copy has pages saying what illustrations are going to be on it – but they aren’t actually drawn in – and I am desperate to see them (told you I was obsessed!!)

Book Review – Here’s Looking at You by Mhairi McFarlane

Posted on by Libby Price

A few weeks ago I read and reviewed ‘You Had Me At Hello‘ by Mhairi Mcfarlane and loved it, and the lovely author (whom I must confess I have a bit of a girl crush on) even tweeted back saying she loved my review – eek!!!  She’ll probably block me on Twitter now thinking I’m a crazed stalker….

So – I set about on her next book with high expectations of enjoying it immensely!

Heres looking at you

Here’s the blurb from Amazon:

“The new novel from the bestselling author of You Had Me At Hello.
Anna Alessi – history expert, possessor of a lot of hair and an occasionally filthy mouth – seeks nice man for intelligent conversation and Mills & Boon moments.
Despite the oddballs that keep turning up on her dates, Anna couldn’t be happier. As a 30-something with a job she loves, life has turned out better than she dared dream. However, things weren’t always this way, and her years spent as the ‘Italian Galleon’ of an East London comprehensive are ones she’d rather forget.
So when James Fraser – the architect of Anna’s final humiliation at school – walks back into her life, her world is turned upside down. But James seems a changed man. Polite. Mature. Funny, even. People can change, right? So why does Anna feel like she’s a fool to trust him?
Hilarious and poignant, ‘Here’s Looking At You’ will have you laughing one minute and crying the next.
The new must-read novel from #1 bestseller Mhairi McFarlane.”

And it did not disappoint at all.  I totally agree with the writer of the above review – at times I really was laughing one minute and crying the next (although I do cry very easily – adverts / X Factor / school assemblies all have me reaching for the tissues).

Don’t tell my friend Emily – but I also found the bit where she took the mickey out of Mills & Boon editors quite funny!!!

The historic (1980s / 90s) references are just bang on for a ‘just 40’ year old – and it’s so well written, like chatting with a mate.  After reading Gone Girl and not really giving a toss about any of the characters, it was lovely to read something where you are rooting for the good guys.

Only a month until Mhairi’s next book ‘It’s Not Me, It’s You’ comes out, and the first few chapters are fab.  Now what to read before then…………

Book Review: You Had Me At Hello by Mhairi McFarlane

Posted on by Libby Price

I have friends in high places who let me have top secret things. This makes me sound like Olivia Pope in Scandal – just without the amazing coats, shoes and sex with the President of the US!! (By the way, if you haven’t watched Scandal – then have a box set gorge – it is brilliant. In fact, it may have to have a blog post all to itself sometime soon!)

So – back to the top secret things. The aforementioned friend works in the book industry (more about her here) and so let me borrow a copy of a book not released until next month (blog post embargoed until October) and the sampler of a new book by Mhairi McFarlane ‘It’s Not Me It’s You’. It was only the first few chapters but I LOVED IT – this is what Amazon has to say about it so I’m not ruining any surprises:

“Delia Moss isn’t quite sure where she went wrong. Everything was going smoothly. Ok, she had a slightly rubbish job working for the council and she hadn’t seen her best friend Emma in god knows how long, but she’d been working up to proposing to Paul for months. This. Was. It.

But with one annoying little ‘beep beep’, Delia’s life is turned upside down and rather than stick around and commit GBH by punching her cheating scumbag boyfriend (who still wants to be with her) in the chops, she decides the best thing to do would be get some head space and leave for London.

But a new city is never going to be the answer, and with a dodgy new job in media PR, where a suspicious yet devastatingly handsome journalist seems to be sniffing around and endangering her job, Delia can’t run forever. Where did the old Delia go? And can she get her back?”

I literally CAN NOT WAIT until 6 November 2014 when it will wing it’s way to my Kindle.

Anyway – the secret sampler thing totally worked as marketing, as I obvs went and downloaded Mhairi McFarlane’s first book ‘You Had Me At Hello’ immediately – and I loved that too!!

You had me at hello

It is written totally in the style I would love to write if I ever do brave the book writing thing, and as if the narrator (Rachel in this case) is chatting to you, the reader, as her mate.  I guess the fact that I’m a similar age to the author (OK, just the other side of 40 to her!) means lots of similar reference points.  It flicks between the present day and uni days with ease and is a fabulous mixture of romance / humour / good guys v bad guys and some real laugh out loud moments (where you accidentally wake your husband up when you’re reading in bed way too late!)   There was a slightly ‘close to the bone’ moment for me when a character said that Rachel, having not seen her since uni, could be 15 stone and shouting at her 4 children – yep, anyone from the University of Southampton class of 1995 – that’s me now!!

It was a great read – and I’d love to know what happens to all of the characters next – which I think is always the sign of a good book – leave them wanting more (possibly the sign of a good ‘lost love’ too?!)

Oh – and you can be as lucky as me and read the first few chapters of ‘It’s Not Me It’s You’ as they are at the end of the Kindle edition of ‘You Had Me At Hello’!