Mad about You: The biggest romcom of 2022: heart-warming, laugh-out loud funny and wonderfully romantic

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Gosh I've read a few books by this author now, and know to expect more than just a romance, but I feel wrecked! A great portion of the book deals with Jon, then with Harriet's other ex, and then some madness with her friend, and oh yeah there's Cal. There is an awful lot of prejudice out there [about romantic fiction but] I think you can kind of have it all.

Mad about You By Mhairi McFarlane | Used | 9780008412456 Mad about You By Mhairi McFarlane | Used | 9780008412456

The pacing was rather meandering, Harriet was not a particularly memorable main character, and the romance was, to be quite frank, subpar. In the meantime, she is shocked when it seems that Jon refuses to accept their break up and in her opinion is acting out of character when he goes off the rails, followed by Jacqueline, his poisonous mother turning up on her doorstep to unfairly harangue her. Her two closest friends are her only family, and her current relationship is more comfortable than passionate.There is the mandatory romantic arc but it was too rushed, thus making it more like forced couplehood than genuine love. She is a wedding photographer and to her dismay, it turns out her landlord and housemate is a groom who famously left his bride at the altar at one of her weddings. They couldn’t have achieved this without each other, they couldn’t have vanquished this man, except as a team.

Mhairi McFarlane (Author of If I Never Met You) - Goodreads Mhairi McFarlane (Author of If I Never Met You) - Goodreads

I don't think I have disliked one of her books this much since "After Hello" (gave it one star) and didn't love "You Had Me at Hello" (gave it 3 stars) as much as other people did. I really enjoyed Mad About You and highly recommend not only this novel, but all of McFarlane’s previous work. So why does he blindside her with a very public marriage proposal at his (ghastly) parents 40th wedding celebration? It is not romantic to a great extent; it is not comic except for a few scattered scenes; it is not light-hearted at all. Things are tricky there, but things get even more messy when Harriet's ex Jon refuses to let her go quietly which brings up past memories from Harriet's last relationship.When it comes to Jon, I did actually like the portrayal of his character, and that it was not just him to blame for the failing of this relationship, but Harriet too, as whilst she may not have admitted it to herself at the time, she was in many ways using Jon as a safe bet after Scott. You can have the fun and you can have the romance and the excitement—your big rom-com cake with all the icing—but you can actually also deal with some really serious emotional stuff. And I just don't have a lot more to say about it, because it's too big and the spoilers are too many. Only it turns out the world really is a small place, and once she realizes who he is, the groom who ditched his bride at one of her recent weddings (Harriet is a wedding photographer), she is eager to be on the move.

Mad about You: The biggest romcom of 2022: heart-warming

In many comedic romances, the heroine would have allowed herself to be won over, given him another chance, caved into pressure and argument, or delayed and delayed the painful confrontation. My family were shocked because they spent five years thinking they were going to have to sit me down and tell me it was never going to happen,” she says. Although her plots are sometimes a bit slow getting started, you always feel she’s given you just enough, never too much and never too little.I do enjoy the way the author manages to some people up in just a few words and yet you really see them. Mhairi McFarlane’s Mad About You is a wonderful character-driven story that follows Harriet Hatley, a wedding photographer who finds herself in need of a place to stay after rejecting her boyfriend’s marriage proposal. Her new landlord, Cal, is also escaping a past relationship, but that’s about the only thing the two have in common.

Mad About You by Mhairi McFarlane | Goodreads Mad About You by Mhairi McFarlane | Goodreads

Summary: When Harriet Harley ends up single and homeless following a breakup with her new fiancé, she moves in with Cal Clarke, a stranger dealing with his own pre-wedding breakup. An editor at Random House put her on the right track, telling her that although she loved the premise, “your heroine is a bitch”. However, then Harriet bumps into her ex, Scott, at a wedding she is covering, and we learn that she was the victim of gas-lighting and spent years in a coercive relationship. The book's female protagonist is an in-demand wedding photographer who loathes romance and does not want to get married (loved that!As a reader though, you end up wishing for a romance that is much more carefree and open, and which spells into action. The strongest point of the book is in the way it highlights insidious relationships ( as is evident from the count mentioned above. Her first few novels were all about relationships with a somewhat familiar trope: a woman is betrayed by her boyfriend. I will never get sick of reading her books and every time I chew through a new one it makes me want to go back and reread all the ones that came before.