book review: how to fall in love

This was a lovely weekend read. I actually finished reading Blood of Olympus on Saturday morning after spending about 2 weeks on it. I may or may not write a book review for that one, because i kinda forgot half of what happened, mostly because i've been so busy to read books. I started reading How To Fall In Love a few hours after finishing BoO, and finished it the next day. It was quite a pleasure to be able to finish a book during the weekend.

As usual, i heard about this book from some bookstagram friends who said it was really good. I also saw it on the bestsellers section at MPH Bookstore, so i've always kept a mental note to buy it. Fortunately, i had a friend who wanted me to read her copy first and tell her if it was worth reading. I obviously accepted her offer because like, i'm so broke now so i can't afford to buy more books for a while.

So here's my review;

How To Fall in Love is a story about a middle-aged woman named Christine, who has felt like her marriage was failing after only 9 months of being married. One night, she came across a man named Simon, who was about to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head. Christine had tried to stop Simon, but had failed in the end when he decided to pull the trigger anyway. Miraculously, Simon didn't die but stayed in comatose for a while.

The incident triggered something in Christine to finally have the courage to end her marriage. A few weeks after the incident, she came across another man, who was about to jump off a bridge. Determined not to have the same incident repeating, she begged the man, Adam, to let her show him the beauty of life before he decides to take his life again. Adam had agreed, and had set the deadline to the night of his birthday, which was two weeks from that day.

Trying to make a man who would rather die than face the troubles in his life was harder than Christine thought. Could she save Adam, and from that, save herself?

In my opinion, the book was a little dull for the first few chapters, which could demotivate some people who like constant action to keep reading the book. But really though, it gets much better when Christine meets Adam. Despite its title, the book wasn't really a romance for most parts. It discussed more about suicide, depression, troubles in life, and the small things that makes life wonderful that we tend to always overlook. I really liked that about the book. Admittedly, i would have liked a bit more bubbly moments but it's nice to realise sometimes that love isn't everything.

There was one chapter in particular that discussed about teenage problems and self-harm/suicide. That part was quite an eye-opener for me, not only because i could relate more with the teens than the adults but also because it made me realise the dangers of feeling like you're all alone with your problems. I was so absorbed in that chapter that i forgot about what the story was. It's wonderful of Cecelia to include these kinds of issues in her books.

The style of writing was quite lovely. You could easily tell that this isn't the mind of a teenager's that we're reading into; it's of  a grown woman's. Christine has some really deep thoughts that were fervently mind-opening, i even found myself writing down some of her thoughts onto post-it notes. Of course, being an adult, there were some adult thoughts sometimes. I honestly found them hilarious because of how different they are compared to an average teenager's, and i've always liked authors who keep things realistic in their stories. Another thing that's interesting about the book is its chapter titles. They're all "How To's", which was very creative of Cecelia Ahern, making this book quite unique from other books.

[SPOILER SECTION, DON'T READ IF YOU'RE PLANNING TO READ THE BOOK]

Yes, it's quite a cliche and predictable story. Of course i knew that they were going to end up together in the end, so i guess the real wonder about the book was going to be the HOW IT HAPPENS part. You could already see that Christine and Adam had started to enjoy each other's company, even though they were both fooled by trying to get Adam back with Maria. I really like how they always have silent fights though, when one of them(mostly Adam) gets moody.
Christine's broken marriage did bother me a little. Nine months was NOT long, and finding out that she didn't even really want to get married in the first place just makes you wonder how many major mistakes in life we'll make in the future. But i guess if that hadn't happened, she probably would never have met Adam.

I didn't like that the story was very particular and specific. It's a story that could happen, but it could only happen to one of millions of people. I had hoped that looking at the title, many people would be able to relate to the story better. But what are the chances that i would fall in love with a guy who wanted to commit suicide, right?That's the only down side for me. I guess i can't really complain though, it IS a fiction after all.
Oh yeah the part where she said she wanted to write a book called How To Fall in Love, and make it a fiction so that people would wonder if it's a real story or not, that was smart. I love it when authors are able to relate their character to the book they just wrote. It's so mysterious.

I liked the ending. I liked how it was back to where they first met, and almost in the same situation. I was literally imagining the book like a movie, Adam being Sam Claflin just because i recently watched Love, Rosie which was a movie adapted from another one of Cecelia's books. I didn't know how to imagine Christine though, sometimes i would imagine her as Lily Collins and sometimes she's just this blurred face with blonde hair. I think it would make a great movie.

[END OF SPOILER SECTION]

Even though the book had 400+ pages, the size is quite small so it's a very quick read. I managed to read 200 pages in a day without feeling like i had read a lot. I don't love it as much as i love Where Rainbows End, mostly because i couldn't relate to the story as much. But still, it was an enjoyable read and my weekend was wonderful because of it. I am rating this book 4.5 out of 5. I also just realised i'm really bad at rating books and that i just rate them individually without always comparing it to the other books i've rated, so please forgive me if our ratings are different. Hope you guys will enjoy the book as much(or more) than i did! :) I'm reading the Shatter Me series next, yay!