Book Review #77: Out of Love by Hazel Hayes

Hey Guys x

I am such a huge fan of Hazel Hayes - she inspires the woman in me, the writer in me and the film fanatic (and potential filmmaker) in me, and I was so excited to get her book. I was counting down the days until it arrived!

This love story in reverse pulls us into the world of our protagonist, who begins the book by watching her boyfriend pack and move out of the home they once happily shared together. As we read, we delve further and further into this couple's past, not only seeing what made them break up, but also seeing what made them fall in love.

Okay, so I have complex feelings about this book. I love the concept, and so many other things that I'll explore in more detail, but because of the way it was written (and a few other issues), I can't say that I loved it. I definitely liked it, though.

I'll start with the things that I liked about the book.

Hayes is a writer. This may be her debut novel, but this is not her first story, and that is so clear in the way that this story is told. It's written so well that you almost become addicted to the flow of the words and her turn of phrase. It's the kind of writing that is used as an example in writing classes.

The characters of Maya and Lena were characters that I connected with on such a deep level, for many different reasons. They are characters that can stand alone, separate from our main characters, but because of their purposes in the story, you find yourself thinking about them in relation to your own life - or at least, I definitely did.

In addition to that, while the story in itself isn't anything particularly unusual (break-ups are very ordinary), the way it's told was so compelling that I found myself thinking about it, not only in my own life, but also in my own writing. The beginning of the book, specifically, inspired me to write, and I haven't had that feeling in a really long time.

I found the depictions of mental health really interesting, particularly because of the fact that the story is told in reverse. It's so interesting to see the way that the protagonist's mental health changes as we go back through her life, and get clues and hints as to the causes of her episodes.

The chapter titled 'Summer Skin', for me, changed the game. I liked the book, but that chapter in and of itself is something special. It was so beautiful that it made me fall in love with the new character introduced, and also the protagonist that I'd been living with for half the book. It made me crave an entire book just about these two characters, and it almost made me resent the chapters that I'd read before, because I saw how much better our protagonist could do. 

But even with 'Summer Skin', the time in the book that I really really felt something was going from the end of the book, back to the beginning. Seeing the entirety of the journey that the character had been on, and the ways that she did (or didn't) change.

But as I mentioned, there were also some things that I didn't like about the book.

Just on a pure writing standpoint, I felt like a lot of the sentences weren't varied enough. The book uses a lot of really long sentences and in some cases overuses commas in order to make sentences unnecessarily long. But this is just a personal preference.

And now something that I wasn't going to mention, but I mention it when I review Carrie Hope Fletcher's books, so I have to mention it here. Because I have followed Hazel on YouTube for so long, this book felt like I was reading her life story. The description feels like her in every way, and because of that I found it hard to really lose myself in this character. And this was made even worse because the protagonist isn't named, so it felt like her name was 'Hazel'. Of course, it isn't the author's fault that I am familiar with her, but it was something that was in my mind as I read.

A lot of my problems lay with the structure of the book, the fact that it's written in reverse. Even beginning this book, and finishing the first chapter, felt weird to me because I realised that I would never get to see this character grow past that point. The protagonist begins the novel feeling like a character that hasn't finished developing, and we never get to see that development.

In addition to this, I also feel like this structure ruined things for other characters. For example, Theo (the protagonist's boyfriend). Because I knew how their story ended, everything he says leading up to the end of the book (and the beginning of the story) feels disingenuous. Even when we're supposed to be figuring out what got these characters together, I just never got it. And I never got Theo as a character, I never understood him or warmed to him.

And I kind of feel this way about the protagonist too. I never quite got her. I liked her, sure, but I never felt connected to her, and I never felt like I understood her. Even when things about her past are revealed, it just felt like an interesting anecdote, it never felt like this was the creation of a character.

Which I think can come down to the lack of character development.

The problem with a book written like this is that it's really hard to have character development - and this doesn't. I never felt like the protagonist really changed, and for a story like this, I feel like she needed to change.

What was good?

The story is expertly teased out. It's kind of like when you're watching a film franchise, and you see something in a later film that was first teased in an earlier one - it was clear that this book was extremely planned out and written with purpose.

What was bad?

I found myself getting confused from time to time. One reason for this was because I found it a bit jarring that, while the book moves backwards, the individual chapters move forwards. So reading a chapter is like reading a story from start to finish, and then the next chapter is so far away from what you've read because it goes further back than the beginning of the chapter that you previously read. But in addition, there was never a clear way to tell how much time had lapsed between each chapter, so that took a bit of figuring out.

Overall

I liked this book. I felt that it was a really good concept that worked as well as it could have, given that these are problems that would exist in any book that was told in reverse.

3.5/5 Stars

Lou - https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/