What a deeply creative debut! Telling a story in reverse is a such an interesting take on a love/romance plot. Hazel has a gift for moving story telling and character building. I can't wait to read more from her in the future. I was actually candidly really surprised how much this book touched me, such a pleasant surprise. Thank you so much for a chance to read it.

"I want you to know how much I love you and appreciate you. I love you so fucking much that... it's not very nice sometimes. It's horrible, actually. I think about losing you and it's like someone's standing on my chest. You could break me. If you wanted to. You could absolutely fucking break me."

We enter this story with an unnamed heroine. She's heartbroken when her ex of many years comes to their home to retrieve his stuff. He's recently asked for a "Break" but decides its time to make it long term. From there we move in reverse to reveal how we got here. I read this book so fast! I loved the premise of this book, a love story in reverse. This book was jam packed with drama and heartbreak, but also with the unique suspense of how they fell in love. The plot was full of substance and some heavy topics; mental health, LGBTQIA, miscarriages, and previous relationship abuse are just scratching the surface. But Hazel Hayes does an excellent job approaching them and making it not too intense or depressing. I loved the main characters support system her best friend Maya and her mother are great supportive secondary characters. They both play big parts of the story while not overpowering the main character.

While the concept for Out of Love -- a love story told in reverse -- is clever enough, its execution makes for a flat, depressing narrative centered around an unnamed protagonist I never connected with. Like Dolly Alderton's Ghosts, Out of Love banks on readers caring about heartbreak by nature of its existence, rather than composing compelling portraits of well-rounded, authentic people trying and failing to find love. The proof is in the pudding: the protagonist has no name. Rather than being emblematic of her unformed identity or everywoman representation, this instead illustrates the story's fundamental lack of character-driven conflict. How can a story about a breakup not be driven by character? When it's driven by the portrayal of stereotypes, generic situational tension, and trauma.

TW: depression, suicidal ideation, alcoholism, dubious consent, domestic abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, miscarriage

I may be biased as I have been a fan of Hazel Hayes for ages and have admired her screenwriting work for years. When she first announced that she was writing a novel I was thrilled, and getting the chance to review the US edition coming out later this month was really just the cherry on top!

The story is told from the perspective of our unnamed heroine, who for the sake of clarity I’ll call “Angel”--a pet name from her partner Theo. She’s flawed and messy and real and I love her. I can only hope to have the strength she displays in the opening chapter. Theo, Maya, and the rest of the cast of characters are equally well-rounded and fully realized. Hayes made me appreciate the people who have played those roles in my own life even more.

I particularly enjoyed the structure of this book! Telling the story in reverse order really served to highlight our need to look back and try to find where things fell apart--and by extension, the “why”. But beyond that, Hazel tells us that there isn’t always a simple, definitive answer to “the why”---that life is equally messy and that with each new relationship we forge we carry our past. At one point “Angel” wonders if we may even carry our parents’ past too, but Hayes also tells us that it’s our responsibility to work on ourselves and not let any of that potential baggage be an excuse, inherited or not.

Hayes wrote a couple of new chapters for this new edition and I was curious to see how it changed the story for me, given how complete the previous edition felt. I’m happy to report that each of these additions really adds to the narrative in their own way, giving us better insight into “Angel’s” headspace, the depth of her relationship with Maya, and proof that Theo was genuinely lovely to her beyond the very beginning. I was a little surprised by “Between the Sheets” being in rhyme, but it weirdly works for me.

I read this compulsively the first time I picked it up and this time around was no exception. It made me laugh and cry in turns and I cannot recommend it highly enough! It comes out September 28th so go pre-order it now!

Star Rating : 9.5/10

An immersive, highly creative story about love, loss, and answering the inevitable question of whether love is worth it or not.

In this incredibly written novel, we meet an unnamed protagonist who is utterly heartbroken while packing her ex-boyfriends belongings from their shared flat. As he comes to collect his things, we move back in time to experience their love from their break up all the way back to very first magical evening they met.

Hazel’s writing reminds me so much of a combination of Sally Rooney and Dolly Alderton. Their ability to make you feel every emotion their character is feeling, and weaving a story with such intellect, wit, and emotion. Never shying away from sharing the realities and difficulties of mental illness and navigating life after trauma.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Our dear, sweet unnamed broken hearted protagonist. Theo is the WORST.

A love story, told in reverse - and traces the relationships ups and more often, the downs. There's quite a bit about depression, anxiety and grief involved and it is a bit hard to take, to be perfectly honest.

There's an honesty to our main girl, an openness, a freedom. Her openness about sexuality was refreshing and something you don't typically you see in books of this nature.

This is a lovely concept of a book. I think that it will take readers a bit to get into - they need to get past Theo being the absolute WORST and just ...find the beauty.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I loved Hazel Hayes writing. Reading her book felt like having a conversation with a friend, and I will definitely be reading more of her work in the future. And while I think this was a unique idea, the execution just didn't work for me. Knowing the outcome of their relationship from the get-go left me feeling underwhelmed when the story was over. I did get emotional a few times, but the overall effect was lost on me.

In the About the Author section, it says Hazel Hayes made the switch from horror to romance because there is “nothing more horrific than love.” That perfectly encapsulates this emotional novel.

This story traces a couple’s relationship backwards from its heart-wrenching end to its bright and hopeful beginning. The unnamed protagonist is expecting her ex, Theo, to pick up the remainder of his possessions while she contemplates how their once love-filled romance came to this cold and tragic split. She can pinpoint the exact moments when her partner fell in and out of love with her.

There are conversations on mental health, including depression, anxiety, panic attacks, trauma, and ptsd. There are also discussions on race, sexuality and what it was like for our left-leaning character to date someone whose family has conservative views.

I loved the main character’s mom, she would literally drop everything at a moment’s notice and fly on a plane to support her daughter in any way that she could. And the MC’s friend, Maya, everyone needs a friend like her.

This definitely broke my cold black heart and then jaggedly stitched it back together. I look forward to more from the author and will gobble up anything else that Hazel Hayes chooses to write.

CW: suicide ideation and non-descriptive sexual assault.

Thank you to Penguin Group Dutton for the ARC provided via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A relationship ends; its story is told in reverse. This was a creative approach to a romance unraveling that I felt was successful in trying to understand what went wrong.

It was well written and poignant, with a realistic examination of family, damaged psyches, and people trying to make their way in the world. At times, near the end (which was the beginning of the relationship!), it did drag a bit, but overall a decent read.

Out of Love is a bittersweet story about finding and losing love, told in reverse. We start with their messy breakup and move backward through their relationship, seeing how it fell apart, and then how it began. This is an unusual structure, but a very interesting one, as each chapter gradually sheds light on the future we’ve already seen, and places into context the chapters we’ve already read, slowly building to the full picture. We see all the ways this couple was bad for each other, but also all the ways they were good for each other, and the ways in which they grew as a result of their relationship, even though it ended badly.

As the book goes on, each chapter takes place further in the past, and that’s easy to track. But some chapters switch back and forth from the present to various flashbacks within the same rough time period, and the timeline within those flashbacks is harder to track. You really have to pay close attention to what’s written in present tense and what’s in past tense, as sometimes that’s the only indication as to whether we’re really in the present or not. But that’s a very minor complaint. Overall, the writing is gorgeous and really well done.

The book also takes a stark look at mental illness, as the narrator suffers from depression and anxiety. It does a good job of showing how depression never completely goes away, even when life is good, even when you “have nothing to be depressed about.” Depression doesn’t need a reason. It insinuates itself into the dark spaces in your life and burrows in, and it is always waiting. It dulls the shine of the good times and makes the bad times so much worse. We watch as the narrator has both good days and bad, frequently doubts herself, and has some very dark moments, but when we take a look at the story as a whole we see that in the end (beginning) she persists, she survives, and she has hope. I feel like that kind of story, and that kind of honest look at depression and anxiety (with a hopeful ending) is very important to portray.

Representation: Bisexual main character, Black side character, mentally ill main character

TW: depression, suicidal ideation, alcoholism, sexual situations with dubious consent, past domestic abuse, past child abuse, past sexual abuse, miscarriage

What a debut novel by Hazel Hayes! A love story told in reverse, Out of Love charts the relationship of our unnamed protagonist with a man named Theo.
This was so lovely; I’ve watched Hazel on YouTube for years now I’ve admired her work forever. I’ve been itching to read this since she first announced it like 2 years ago now? I think because I’m so familiar with Hazel’s work, her voice as a writer felt so familiar and so comforting to read, even as the characters are going through really tough times. It was so funny to read lines that I recognize from her like “dizzying heights” and “tactical chunder”. You also get the sense while reading of what this did for the writer, it feels like we’re being allowed a glimpse at something so personal and heartfelt, it’s really moving. Highly recommend (and pro tip: reread the first chapter right when you finish, it really rounds out the experience)

I appreciated the book for what it was, however I was disappointed with what I was given. It was clear that the author took quite a bit from her own personal (and fairly public) relationship that ended a few years ago, and it was hard to look past that while reading. What I didn't like the most was the fact that in all of those pages, I had such a hard time finding any sort of empathy for the characters. I suggest to others to only read this book if you don't know who Hazel is first, you may find more to it than I did.

Reading this book is a bit like reading a blog where you start in the present and work your way back. It's a clever technique, but doesn't redeem the uninspiring protagonist.

I began this book loving it and I ended it confused. The story is told in bits and pieces, leading back to the toxic star of a sad, prolonged breakup. The reader is brought in a circle to understand the events in the protagonist’s life that brought her to the breakup that broke her heart and started the book.

This book left me wondering if I missed something.

Thank you Netgalley for this novel.

Wow! What a creative way of reviewing the anatomy of broken/ toxic relationship by moving backwards: witnessing the breakup and going back with time jumps to learn why things didn’t work out: it made me feel like reading dramatic/ romantic version of Memento! The movie also starts with its ending and you move backwards step by step to find out what was the real reason behind things got out of control!

I didn’t watch YouTube videos of the author till I read the book but I realized she’s doing quiet brilliant job. I enjoyed her sense of humor, smart comments, her naturalness and I highly recommend you to check them out.

And I have to admit this book is such a great start with this interesting concept which made me push request button harder after reading the blurb. I’m sold at first sight.

But... yes my unpopular but comments are about to come:

Even though I liked this unique concept, there are some problematic things bothered me to enjoy the full ride.

I liked to start my pros because I always like to concentrate on good things in books : I know how hard the creation process and criticizing things without thinking further is easier.

So the idea and execution between time jumps and focusing on mental health, family dynamics, relationships were great choices to form an inspirational and thought provoking story.

But here are my cons:
Unfortunately I tried too hard to connect with the protagonist who shall not be named and Theo was typical horrible person who never ever earned my sympathy. He can be quiet easily punchable douchebag.

Reading about toxic relationships is always enlightening experience but i always like to read the characters I truly care about. If I could care any of them, reading of their self discovery and painful journey could help me to empathize with them. So the characterization part of the book failed me!

The subject choice and creative plot line intrigued me. So I’m still looking forward to read future works of the author ( actually watching videos and putting a face on the creator and her Irish heritage are also the factors made me more interested) !

So this time I’m giving three solid, it’s okay read but it could be better, getting rid of toxic relationships and toxic people as I’m listening Britney’s Toxic song stars!

Special thanks to NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Dutton for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinions.