Change of Pace

It’s Not Me, It’s You by Mhairi McFarlane

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


So, just quietly, trigger warning for anyone who’s ever had their heart torn apart by betrayal. This one was a reread for me, so I feel like I should’ve been prepared, but I’d forgotten how hard it hits. I do really appreciate that Mhairi didn’t skip over the more difficult to write elements of the story, though. It would be difficult to craft the tension and turmoil of the aftermath of betrayal. As a writer, I’m not really sure how I would go about sitting in that discomfort. As a reader, though, that is exactly what I needed to read next.

The first time I read this one, I was in my twenties. Now, being roughly the same age as the protagonist, not gonna lie, it hits a very different chord. Especially the meanderings about biological clocks and what it means to be young and old at the same time. But then, this is consistently one of the things I love most about McFarlane’s writing. She seems to effortlessly blend the profound and difficult with the lighthearted and hilarious. I will say this, though: having just recently finished reading Attached, I don’t know that I will ever view relationship-based character and plot development in the same way.

All in all, this is an excellent enemies to lovers read. It ticks one hell of a lot of my boxes. And, as a writer, there is some pretty impressive skill in how McFarlane crafts her pace and plot. In one of my first writing classes as a young impressionable student, the teacher made the point that you knew you had a good book in your hands if, ten pages from the end, everything was a complete mess and you had no idea how it could all be fixed satisfactorily in such a short span of pages. But it was. And it is.

‘He was blandly, boringly, competent at having a face.’

My favourite quote in ‘It’s Not Me, It’s You’

Final notes:

• The ‘Cock & Tail’ sounds absolutely horrifying as a concept and I really hope this bar doesn’t exist in real life. Just saying.
• If it does, however, I’m super curious, please tell me how it was.

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