2 Book Lovers Reviews

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See more of Shelley's Contemporary Romance

This book has been getting a lot of buzz and I can understand why. First of all, the title alone grabbed my attention. It sounded like it had the potential to break my heart, and I am not a romance reader who looks for instant love, the perfect, smooth sailing kind of relationships for the characters. Give me the emotions to the max. I want to feel something when I am reading. I want the intense attraction between the characters, but I certainly don’t mind if they have to work and wait for anything to happen. Don’t make it easy, make me sweat it out right along with them. Yulin Kuang did not make it easy on her characters, and I appreciated it.

Helen is a complex character. She isn’t warm and fuzzy, she has a difficult time expressing her feelings, but this was how she was raised by her parents. She gives what she received. She was cared for and loved by her family, but they just weren’t demonstrative people.

When her young adult series gets picked up to be a television series, she is getting the recognition that she has longed for in her career. Getting to sit in on its creation and production is a dream come true, and she moved to Los Angeles to live out this dream. The downfall to this is that Grant Shepard is also working on this show. She knows Grant from her hometown, and while they were never friends, she has a history with him. He was Mr. Popular, homecoming king, and an athlete. She was studious, quiet, and socially awkward. Aside from their vast differences in high school, she didn’t know how she was going to be able to sit and work in the same room with him, seeing him would be a constant reminder of her pain.

While Grant knew that he was good at his job and could bring this series to fruition and make it shine, he wasn’t sure how his interactions were going to be with Helen. She wasn’t the only one who had serious reservations about working together. Their interactions were stiff, unfriendly, and awkward to say the least, but they had to work together in a team environment in order to get the job done.

As I said, the author did not give these characters a free ride. Nope. She made them experience the awkwardness and the painful interactions. While they did become friendlier as the novel went on, their relationship was complicated, messy, and seemed doomed before it really ever even lifted off. What they did have in spades was chemistry. Holy smokes, they sparked.

How to End a Love Story was filled with emotion, family issues, personal growth, and romance. I would definitely read another novel by this author. She didn’t just offer up an easy romance, it was an uphill trek that was well worth the journey.

*4 Stars