Member Reviews
With a set of fascinating lead characters, and a tender, but incredibly sensual love story between them, this book took my breath away with the way it wrought my emotions whichever way it pleased, and it left me feeling high from the kind of euphoric glee that only a great book fills me with.
How to End a Love Story is a truly special novel. It is beautifully written and has a true depth of feeling. The story is excellently plotted, with Grant and Helen's relationship developing realistically through the challenges they face as individuals and as a couple.
Helen and Grant have great chemistry and their banter is fun and engaging. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys romance novels that are steamy, full of heart, and incredibly well-written.
It's been a long time since a book touched the core of my soul and How To End A Love Story did just that. The writing captivated my heart in a way that hasn't happened since I was a teenager reading my favourite book at the time.
This writing is powerful, gorgeous and very profound. The characters are complex multilayered and feel like real people in a messy situation. Everything is black and white until it's not. It's like Yulin saw into soul and read my innermost private thoughts and turned them into Helen's character and her thoughts on page.
The chemistry (and banter) between Helen and Grant is one for the books! (pun intended) Their love story is real and yet she sprinkles the perfect amount of Hollywood dreaminess into it. After all it is a story mostly set in a writers room on a backlot in a film studio in LA, can it get any better than that.
This book simply put wrecked me.
Yulin Kuang is a new force in the Literary Romance world. Fans of Emily Henry will rejoice. Mark my words: HTEALS will blow up, go viral and will catapult Yulin in the same mega stardom and loyal fanbase as Emily Henry.
Thanks to the Netgalley and the publisher for providing this read. All opinions are my own.
I loved this story. From a reader's perspective, we see a glimpse at the full ending of the relationship instead of the culminating incident that either breaks a couple apart or brings them closer together. I enjoy story that takes you to all the way to the end! I enjoyed seeing into a world that I don't know much about; the Hollywood writers' room. The author gives what I hope is a realistic idea of the behind the scenes experiences of the humans who create our favorite on-screen entertainment. Mostly, I hope all of them are experiencing romantic trysts inside their offices. Wouldn't that make for better TV writers? The main character is a Chinese American, grappling with the expectations of culture and the identity of being the sole surviving child after her sister committed suicide. I appreciated how the story didn't flinch away from the complexity and grief surrounding this. At first, the decision to make the main characters connected by this tragedy seemed strange to me. However, I thought it was well used to explain the motivations of both of them in seeking and rejecting their partnership (on so many levels). Finally, if for no other reason, please pick this book up to experience the most smoldering, sexy, and well described smut I've encountered in a while. It was the highest level, for the female gaze, smut.
This book is a delight of romanic, emotional, and propulsive writing. Thanks to Yulin sharing the ins and outs of developing and filming her projects over the years, I felt like such a fangirl when I understood the tv show-related jargon.
I’m normally the kind of reader who doesn’t put things down. I’m a speed reader and a skimmer - not really out of effort but just because that’s how my brain works. But this book was the rare one that got me to slow down in my reading, needing breaks built in so my emotions didn’t bubble over, and that I didn’t want to end so I could keep savoring it.
I was surprised at first how sad and emotional this book is - falling in love with your sister’s accidental killer is a lot to reveal/premise in the first chapter and I started off a tiny bit skeptical if I could get past it.
The main characters in this book feel so well rounded and complex in a way many romance characters can be one-note. There was so much love and complexity and EMOTIONS!! in the book and I loved all of them.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC