This Is A Love Story by Jessica Thompson
*****
This Is A Love Story is indeed a love story. It's also a drag-you-through-the-emotional-wringer, rip-your-heart-out-and-stamp-all-over-it kind of story. And I loved it.
It tells the story of Nick and Sienna, two young Londoners who become friends, although it's made explicitly clear from the start of the novel that they both want something more.
Life gets in the way, as it so often does in these things and stops them getting together, despite a few near misses. The plot is reassuringly predictable, but from almost the first chapter, I wasn't in it for the plot. I was in it for the sheer love of the characters, so deep and well-constructed that I was rooting for them throughout.
The final third of the book had me blubbing my eyes out on a packed commuter train, forcing me to pack it away until I got home to the privacy of room and finish reading there. I devoured it, and it wasn't until I turned the last page that I realised how attached I had become to Nick and Sienna. Closing the back cover left me feeling bereft.
For anyone who enjoys a bit of high-brow reading, this probably isn't the book for you. It's pretty much ready-made for adaptation into a rom-com film. I'd love to see more from Thompson -- her character work is certainly deserving of another airing, but I'd like to see a less predictable storyline from her future work. Rip my heart out in a different way.
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