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3.5 stars

Cecelia Ahern is one of my favourite authors, and with good reason. She has a way with words. She has a way with taking difficult topics, in this case suicide, and turn it into a book that’s somehow light and makes you smile. There’s always a touch of magic around her stories, something that makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. And How to Fall in Love is no different.

Christine goes through life swearing by self-help books. How to Fire an Employee, How to Write A Self-Help Book, How to Enjoy Life. But no book can prepare her when she stumbles across Adam, standing on a bridge and about to kill himself. Christine manages to talk him out of it by promising to show him the beauty of life. She’s given exactly two weeks before Adam tries to kill himself again. So Christine helps him get his girlfriend back, helps him enjoy the little things in life, helps him with family issues. Only things get a little complicated when Christine finds herself falling in love with Adam.

I have to admit, there were parts that didn’t quite work for me. I thought Christine was sometimes a bit too thorough, walking in on him showering on purpose just to check if he wasn’t trying to kill himself. I get it, he’s suicidal, but there is such a thing as privacy, and some of the scenes felt weird.

However, once Christine and Adam start to really get along, things are wonderful. There were some scenes that really stood out to me, such as the time when they took a pie baking class together, or the time when Adam dressed up as Where’s Waldo and chased his ex-girlfriend around town with Christine in tow. When there was banter, it was glorious. When a scene had to be cute, it was freaking adorable. I can “complain�� about Ahern usually waiting until the very end for the couple to really get together, so about halfway through I found myself looking a little bit like this:



But when they do get together, it’s very satisfying. I also really liked Christine’s family �� blunt and straightforward to the point of me laughing at pretty much everything they said. They’ll talk about suicide as if you’re talking about the morning weather, and it was hilarious and incredibly refreshing.

In a way, How to Fall in Love is a self-help book for us too. It’s not just a love story, but it’s a story about how to fall in love with life. It’s sweet, it’s light, it’s fluffy and funny. And you will absolutely fall in love with it.

”Where would we be without tomorrows? What we’d have instead would be todays. And if that was the case, with you, I’d hope for the longest day for today. I’d fill today with you, doing everything I’ve ever loved. I’d laugh, I’d talk, I’d listen and learn, I’d love, I’d love, I’d love. I’d make every day today and spend them all with you, and I’d never worry about tomorrow, when I wouldn’t be with you. And when that dreaded tomorrow comes for us, please know that I didn’t want to leave you, or be left behind, that every single moment spent with you were the best times in my life.��