Mad About You - Mhairi McFarlane

Author: Mhairi McFarlane

Genre: Romance-Drama

Rating: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A lot of how you feel about the book will depend on how you feel about the main character. The rest will depend on whether you considered this a romcom based on that title and cover. I disliked the main character but luckily, I wasn’t looking for a romcom. Hence the mixed feelings.

Story:

(The GR blurb for this book is quite misleading because it makes the book sound like a story of Harriet and Cal. It isn’t. It is Harriet’s story almost all the way.)

Harriet, a wedding photographer, has been dating the “perfect man” for about two years, but when he proposes, a lot of doubts she’s been having come together and she breaks off the relationship. Suddenly single, she moves into the first good house-share she can find. Her new landlord, Cal, is also escaping a past relationship, but that’s about the only thing the two have in common. When Harriet’s past rears up its ugly head, she needs to ask herself some hard questions and decide whether to run away again or confront the past to clear her future.

The story is narrated in the third person limited perspective of Harriet.

I was not looking for a romcom. This book isn’t a romcom. So it clicked for me at least in that respect. But those who imagine this to be a sweet “chicklit” that is full of pep and love will be disappointed. It is not romantic to a great extent; it is not comic except for a few scattered scenes; it is not light-hearted at all. (Oh, and no steamy scenes at all. This is a plus point for me, but might be a minus point for some romance lovers.)

The title is perfectly suited for the book but not in the way you would imagine. “Mad About You” takes the other meaning of the word “mad”, as in loony/weird/stalker-ish. There are quite a few couple-based relationships in the book. If I count all of them, including currently dating or married or ex-couples or those mentioned for a few pages, there are about 8-9 pairs. Of these, most are toxic, involving gaslighting or cheating or dominating or mercenary agenda or mental abuse by at least one partner. However, I don’t think most readers who look at that title will think of this meaning while picking up the book. “Mad About You” thus might lead to very different reader expectations. (That bright pastel cover doesn’t help matters.)

The strongest point of the book is in the way it highlights insidious relationships (as is evident from the count mentioned above.) What I also appreciate is how the author didn’t shift from her agenda to a great extent. Unlike so many writers who cram in as many dark/important themes as they can, McFarlane sticks to toxic relationships and never loses her focus. She analyses such relationships from various angles and also covers online abuse and how people jump in to troll someone based on one person’s version of events. I love the confrontation scene towards the end; that’s the best part of the book.

What didn’t work for me was the plot & character development. The plot is not entirely predictable but there are too many convenient coincidences that fit in as neatly as a beginner’s jigsaw puzzle. I would have let this go if the characters were better but most of them ended up irritating me. The most frustrating one was Harriet. The writing sort of forces us into supporting Harriet and understand what she is going through. But there are many cases where she herself accuses without justification, takes very questionable decisions, and jumps to conclusions faster than you can say “Harriet!” I think your liking of this book will be highly dependent on the extent to which you connect and empathise with Harriet's character. I simply couldn’t. Cal was a loveable character but doesn’t get enough of page space. A couple of the other characters conveniently change from white to black to white again as per the needs of the plot.

Furthermore, the writing style also didn’t satisfy me. For some reason, I simply couldn’t get going with the pace, though I still don’t know what slowed me down. There is a lot of informal slang for which I couldn't even guess the meaning at times. There are way too many adverbs in use. Sometimes, a single regular-sized para ended up with 8-9 adverbs, which was very distracting. The chapter endings at times are really odd, like it would stop right in the middle of a scene and the next chapter begins in continuation with the next line of the very scene. (This isn’t a thriller; there was no need for such mini cliff-hangers.) There is the mandatory romantic arc but it was too rushed, thus making it more like forced couplehood than genuine love.

This was my very first Mhairi McFarlane novel and looking at the number of fans she has here, I am sure she is a fabulous writer. So this book might just be a wrong one to begin with. I will definitely read a couple more of her works before I can make up my mind on whether her books and I suit each other.

I have been going back and forth on the rating for this one. Most of the novel fell between 2.5-3 stars for me. But the confrontation scene and the spotlight on gaslighting deserves at least a 4 stars. So I’ll go with the average and rate this 3.25 stars.

My thanks to HarperCollins UK and NetGalley for the DRC of “Mad about You”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.