A book review | P.S. I Love you by Cecelia Ahern

Rating:3/5
Pages: 470

P.S. I Love You is probably more well known for its film adaptation with Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler and I'm a big fan of it, therefore I was excited to stumble across a copy of the original book by Cecilia Ahern.  Because i've watched the film first I couldn't help throughout comparing the book to the film and thats what I'll be doing in this post. I also found myself not being able to imagine the characters any different from the actors that played them in the film.

P.S. I Love You is centred around a widow called Holly and how she deals with life without her husband. In the following months Holly receives letters from her husband that he had written for her before he died. He wrote one letter for each month till the end of the year. 

I love how real the story of P.S. I Love You is, it's something that thousands of widows have to deal with each year and I assume the feelings Holly's going through are quite relatable. 

Firstly the main difference between the book and the film is that Holly( and Gerry) in the book live in Ireland whilst in the film Holly only visits Ireland and Gerry's family. 

I thought that in the film we got to know Gerry more before he died whereas in the book Gerry dies early on in the plot line. 

I found that there were many differences to the film adaption so much so that at times they seemed like different stories that just seemed to contain the same initial idea. For example in the book Holly does get on well with Gerry's parents which for some it is probably a more relatable outcome however I felt sad that Holly didn't have that connection still with Gerry and his family.

I gave this book 3/5 stars as for me the book just wasn't as good as the film and the book had a lot of expectations to live up to. Having said that I still really love the storyline and would really recommend it to anyone who likes to read romantic book. 

The rest of the post contains spoilers to the ending.

Holly meets a barman called Daniel and over the course of the book we see them grow as friends and we as an audience want Holly to fall in love with him and have the oh so happy ending. However we once again get a very realistic ending and Holly decides they should stay friends. In the last couple of pages Holly bumps into Rob a guy she met and scared away in the local shop and we are left with some hope that Holly will go on a date with this guy and that she has started to move on with her life. 

I say this book is worth a read if you like the film however I think you would like it more if you went into it blind not watching the film and could create the characters in your head.

Below is the review I filmed over on my Youtube channel.

Until next time, Sophie x