P.S. I Love You
by Cecelia Ahern
Summary: Holly couldn't live without her husband Gerry, until the day she had to. They were the kind of young couple who could finish each other's sentences. When Gerry succumbs to a terminal illness and dies, 30-year-old Holly is set adrift, unable to pick up the pieces. But with the help of a series of letters her husband left her before he died and a little nudging from an eccentric assortment of family and friends, she learns to laugh, overcome her fears, and discover a world she never knew existed. The kind of enchanting novel with cross-generational appeal that comes along once in a great while, PS, I Love You is a captivating love letter to the world!
Source: I purchased a paperback.
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Review:
P.S. I Love You was terrible. I absolutely love the movie and the premise of the story in general. I thought the idea was such a unique and refreshing idea for a book and after shedding quite a few tears watching the movie, the book nerd in me knew the book had to be better. This is one of those rare cases where the book wasn’t better than the movie. Not by a long shot. And I’m not saying that because the book was different because that is actually not relevant at all.
Reading P.S. I Love You was like reading a high school creative writing assignment. The pieces were there and the scenes were attempting to build up to events or trying to show the reader more about the characters, but they weren’t very well strung together and, as a result, a large portion of the novel was irrelevant. Most of the dialogue felt forced, the scenes jumped around a lot, and many scenes had tedious details and dialogue for absolutely no reason. Holly did this and Holly did that and Holly felt this and Holly felt that and then she got a letter. I can tell you tedious details about when she opened them and how many times she went different places the next day, but I can’t really tell you the depths of her emotions or what kind of turmoil she went through because it watered down by the other details of her days. Everything was disconnected and just horribly executed.
I hate to be quite so critical of the book, but it was written badly enough for me have put it down when I was almost done. I just didn’t care, couldn’t wade through it anymore, and wanted to just be done with it. I give the author full credit for coming up with such a great idea, but it was terribly executed as a result. I will never pick up the rest of her books, even if people recommend them to me because I was that underwhelmed by her writing. I applaud whoever decided to create such a great movie from the book and I’m glad that at least the story was able to be expressed in a better way.
I don’t recommend picking this book up. Watch the movie. And while I will not be reading more of the author, I do realize that P.S. I Love You was her first novel and written at a young age. I’m sure it is inevitable that her later novels are written better, so I would say that if you are going to pick up one of her books, it should probably be her later works.
Labels: contemporary, DNF, Review
