Review: You Had Me At Hello by Mhairi McFarlane

Title: You Had Me At Hello
Author: Mhairi McFarlane
Publisher: Avon
Release date: February 25th 2014
Source: Edelweiss
Format: eARC

Rating: 3.5/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

What happens when the one that got away comes back? Find out in this sparkling debut from Mhairi McFarlane.

‘Think of the great duos of history. We're just like them.’
‘You mean like Kylie and Jason? Torvill and Dean? Sonny and Cher?’
‘I think you’ve missed the point, Rachel.’

Rachel and Ben. Ben and Rachel. It was them against the world. Until it all fell apart. It’s been a decade since they last spoke, but when Rachel bumps into Ben one rainy day, the years melt away.

They’d been partners in crime and the best of friends. But life has moved on: Ben is married. Rachel is not. Yet in that split second, Rachel feels the old friendship return. And along with it, the broken heart she’s never been able to mend.

Hilarious, heartbreaking and everything in between, you’ll be hooked from their first ‘hello’.

I was in the mood of reading a chick-lit book, so that´s why I requested You Had Me At Hello, mainly because I like books about second chances and that the name of the book reminds me of a scene from the movie Jerry McGuire  but the book doesn´t have similarities with the movie).

Rachel is a thirty one year old woman and at the beginning of the story she had canceled her wedding and beaks up with her ​​boyfriend Rhys, they had been together for 13 years, but they have a fight and she realizes, that she isn´t and doesn´t want to go on with the wedding, although it's hard for her to live alone because they were together for many years and isn´t easy to be alone. But she has the support of her three best friends, she had know them since university.

And while she´s getting to the idea of ​​living unmarried and unloved for the moment, Ben returns to her life, he was her best friend in university, and she hasn´t seen him in the last 10 years and it´s very clear (at least to the reader) that she has romantic feelings towards him; but there is a small detail, Ben is married. But despite the fact that Ben is married, she wants to resume their friendship and once they meet again is as if no time had passed.

What I liked about the book was that there are several chapters that happen in the past with Ben and Rachel and we can see how they met, what kind of friendship they had (I really liked their friendship) and how they used to hang a lot of time together and that´s obvious to the reader that Rachel liked Ben. One thing I also like is that neither in the past nor in the present at any time neither one of them cheat or deceives their current partner/love interest.

What I didn´t like was that there are many slow moments in story and I was already desperate for something to happen and I think I was on 68% of the book when finally something happens.

Overall, I really enjoy this book, it´s a light, fresh and fun read, that´s about friendship, romance between friends and second chances. And I would not have bothered if they had include an epilogue, but I can´t have everything in life, so I´ll imagine what happens next.