BOOK REVIEW

The Year I Met You
                     Cecelia Ahern

PUBLISHER: Harper Collins
GENRE: Contemporary
PAGES: 328
SOURCE: Waterstones/Amazon

Jasmine know two things: one, she loves her vulnerable sister unconditionally, and will fight to the death to protect her from anyone who upsets her. Two, she's only ever been good at one thing – her job helping business start-ups.

So when she’s sacked and put on gardening leave, Jasmine realises that she has nothing else to fill her life. Insomnia keeps her staring out of her bedroom window, and she finds herself watching the antics of her neighbour, shock jock Matt, with more than a casual eye. Matt is also taking a forced leave of absence from work, after one of his controversial chat shows went too far…

Jasmine has every reason to dislike Matt, and the feeling appears to be mutual. But not everything is as it seems, and soon Jasmine and Matt are forced to think again…

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Firstly, I feel like I need to address the two star rating, probably more of a 2.5 as I didn't particularly like it but it was more than just ok. When I initially read what this book was about, I thought it would be about the whirlwind love story of Jasmine and Matt spread over the year. It wasn't that at all. *SPOILER ALERT* They never even kiss, not even once. It wasn't anything amazing and I felt that I wasn't drawn into the story and could quite easily put it down and leave it for a few days then come back to it, at times I felt like I had to force myself just to get to end so I can move onto another book. The story line was just boring, Well written, but boring. I didn't feel engaged at all and couldn't connect to the characters at all, I just felt like I was reading the rambling thoughts of a 30 something year old woman.

Despite this, I did feel that Cecilia Ahern did integrate real life and family issues into the story well, it was realistic in the sense that the troubles that Jasmine was going through are things that many people deal with in everyday life. Troubled relationships with parents, job loss, having trouble finding a purpose in life, I liked the metaphors that Ahern used throughout the book comparing Jasmine's life to gardening. 

I was so disappointed at this book, I did enjoy the last 40ish pages of the book as well as odd chapters or "scenes" of the book as some were funny, such as the interaction between Jasmine and Matt and I felt that the conclusion of the story was really good and enjoyable, and left me feeling satisfied, I just felt that on the whole the book wasn't all that good which is a shame as I have enjoyed some of Ahern's other books.

Have you read the book? What's your opinion?

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