HOW TO END A LOVE STORY broke the spell of my string of not-so-great romance novels, restoring my faith in the genre. (I tend to roll my eyes at Asian girls and white men as the love interest, but I think I can give Grant a pass this time, lol.)

The book follows Helen Zhang and Grant Shepard, who experienced a tragic accident (in different ways) that has altered their lives. We meet them 13 years later since the accident, with Helen now a bestselling author and Grant one of the screenwriters adapting Helen’s book into a TV series.

This story goes beyond your normal romance novel. It’s explores familial love (whatever that looks like) and self love. The way we fear love, and fear to love. The complexities of grief and guilt, showing how these emotions shaped Helen and Grant.

Initially, Helen’s character didn’t resonate with me. Her insecurities, especially regarding her looks, writing skills, and career, as well as her sometimes immature behavior, particularly in her relationships with her parents, were off-putting. However, as her story unfolded, I began to empathize with her struggles, realizing she was broken by grief, guilt, and pressure she placed on herself. As her story unfolded, I felt a wave of complex emotions and found myself deeply moved, especially as I thought of my close relationship with my sister.

The chemistry between Helen and Grant was one of the highlights for me. Their banter, the sexual tension (some scenes are steamy 🥵), and their journey to heal from their troubled pasts, together, were beautifully portrayed.

However, I did find the pacing uneven, particularly towards the end where it felt rushed. Additionally, I wished for more depth in Helen’s relationship with her parents, especially regarding the unresolved issue of Grant, which felt somewhat glossed over.

Overall, HOW TO END A LOVE STORY is an emotional and intricate story of two broken individuals shaped by grief and guilt, finding solace and healing together.

The foundation of this “love” story — which, not a spoiler since it is included in the blurb after all — is that the MC’s sister took her own life in high school by jumping in front of the future love interest’s car.

Now, would this understandably be a difficult loss to reconcile? Yes. Would it be hard to look at the driver the same way, even though they’re just as damaged by the death? Of course.

But would you outwardly show resentment, anger, and disgust towards this person whom your sibling non consensually involved in their suicide? I would hope not, I would hope that you would instead be upset that your sibling chose to unwillingly involve them and cause them trauma for the remainder of their life.

Yet, the MC and her family treat this man as though he deliberately killed the sister. They, frankly, are downright cruel to him; and when the MC meets him again some years later, she STILL treats him as though he murdered her sister and asks the man to QUIT HIS JOB simply because he should, out of decency and all, since she doesn’t want to be around him.

With that said and to prevent this from becoming a complete rant, these two characters should have never gotten together in any capacity, the MC is the real villain in this story, and the LI deserves so much better.

Loved the dialogue, smart writing, and peek into film- and television-writing. Really struggled with the basic premise of the love story, though; the plot point that makes the two MCs is truly traumatic, for both of them, and felt hard to believe as a stable foundation for an eventual emotionally healthy love story.

I love Helen and Grant together. They were bound by a horrible tragedy, and I can totally relate to some of the things Helen was going through with her parents. She forgave Grant but it took so much longer for her parents to. They made this book enjoyable to read!

I absolutely loved this book. I laughed. I cried. I pounced the air while kicking my feet uncontrollably .

How To End a Love Story is so rich and full life.

I truly wanted to love this book but I got to the 60% mark and ended up not finishing it because it just wasn’t holding my attention.

All of that to say, I’ve seen so many RAVE reviews of the book and I think it was more of a me problem than anything.

Cute, quick read. Love the representation of heterosexual Asian families and relationships, especially the quip about drying dishes in the dishwasher instead of running it to wash. Very relatable! The rollercoaster of emotions, silent treatments, family dynamics, mental health, love - ugh, everything - was so well laid out.

Included as a top pick in weekly April New Releases post, which highlights and promotes upcoming releases of the month (link attached)

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Spice Level: 🌶️🌶️(and a half)

I really enjoyed this read and the overall plot. I do feel that the ending of the book felt rushed and fell flat for me. There was so much build up of tension and character development that the ending just felt… “there” without a lot of thought. Overall an enjoyable read and well written, I was just a little disappointed by how the ending was written.

Thank you to NetGalley & Avon for this ARC to review.

I had heard a lot of great things about this book & I was really excited to read it. It was definitely an interesting read and it did keep my interest throughout but I will say this one just wasn't for me. This is once again an example of why publishers need to include possible trigger warnings and content warnings in the description of a book listing PRIOR to requesting the book. Because there were aspects of this book that absolutely would have kept me from requesting it had I known.

It was a definitely more of a drama than a romance story and it had a whole lot of depth and tragedy which is not usually what I'm looking for in a romance book and I think the blurb didn't give enough of a heads up that this was going to be a tough book and not a typical romance.

I would love to read more from this author in the future, the writing was very well and beautifully done.

Wow, I was in the biggest reading slump before this book. And even though it started off a little slow for me I knew it had so much potential and it didn't disappoint. The last 60% was phenomenal. I can't wait to see what this author does for the Emily Henry film adaptation. I could feel the emotions of the characters falling off the page. The bonds that drew them together and the things that kept them apart. There were times I need to just sit and stare at a wall for a few minutes to process this beautiful story. What to expect: Huge grief storyline LA vibes Writers room Forbidden romance Anxiety amd trauma representation Complicated relationship I adored this book, if you were on the fence about picking this up I urge you to run out and buy it immediately. I loved reading about how writers rooms worked in LA, having been on a few film/TV sets here in the UK it was nice to see an inside scoop on how that side of things worked too. I also love reading books that are about books in some way, so this was great! What a great debut

This one admittedly took me a minute to get through because I had a feeling it was going to wreck me, and I WAS RIGHT. What a perfectly achey romance that manages to run the gamut of emotion — sweet, sexy, messy, devastating — and all swirl together in a way that very few writers would have been able to pull off. I can’t wait for whatever Kuang writes next (and if I was excited for her to adapt Emily Henry’s books to screen before, I’m even more psyched now!). What an absolute banger of a romance novel.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this edition from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Oof this one might be a doozie to review. Because I honestly don’t know what to say about this? In a few ways it was perfect. In others ways I was supremely mad. Like as a character driven reader, her and her family were pissing me off. And Grant had me so confused. But the writing style and the romance once they finally got together?! *chef’s kiss*

Ok so I guess I’m going to start with the characters. I had such a love hate relationship with them. I hated Helen because of the way she treated Grant. She basically was blaming him for killing her sister, when in realiity, I’m sure Grant would have preferred what happened to have happened to literally anyone else. She never stopped to think that this person was also fucked up about this whole situation and I thought that was truly effed up. And then Grant, Idk wtf he was thinking. Idk how they went from hating each other to doing what they were doing. It was like blink and you miss it. I don’t know when he forgave her, but I was glad as hell he did lol

The romance kind of came out of nowhere. They were enemies and then all of a sudden she was like having sex dreams about him. I remember rewinding it (since I read the audio) and was like Whoa Nelly where did this come from” lmao I was that confused. With him coming to the funeral I knew he had a soft spot for her so it was less confusing. I just thought he was finally acting on those feelings. With her tho, she literally hated his guts. It was very weird.

Everything else tho ate. I heard that the author is the screen play writer for Emily Henry and I keep thinking my gawd this movie is going to eat lol I was immediately, and I mean IMMEDIATELY sucked into this book. I was listening to it with my airpods in, outloud during dinner, out loud while working, etc. I had to like stretch it out so that I didn’t finish it overnight. It took me three days, but I also finished it in 3 sittings. Even Grant’s voice seemed so authentic. Idk it was captivating.

The only other thing I didn’t like was the ending. It dragged on until the end. And just when I thought I was going to get a really good groveling scene and maybe even one more smex scene, it was over. I just really felt like it was a bad place to stop. And that grand gesture was grand gesturing. I think she should have let him find that part on his own, but that would probably have given him control of the grand gesture and I kind of like the way it played this time.

This book was quite a surprise for me. I wasn’t going to read it because it was too close to the last book I read, but I saw it everywhere and just requested it from my library. It just so happened that it came right after that book, but I still read it. And I’m hella glad, because I would have been on the hold list forever lol That book ended up being picked for Reese’s book club. Which means I never would have gotten it lol

This is not your typical BOTM romance. it starts off heavy and just kind of stays there. It tried to lighten up with the humor, but i think i need more comedy in my romance books, i like to escape real life when i read, not feel more depressed

This story had me in a chokehold! Helen's sister died when they were in high school. She stepped in front of a speeding truck, driven by Grant, a classmate. Understandably, everyone was traumatized. Helen's parents blamed Grant - but it wasn't actually his fault.

Helen and Grant coincidentally meet up later in life and are forced to work together and there are sparks and tension.

The characters were very well fleshed out and I felt like I knew them. I'd definitely read more about Grant and Helen.

A well written romance novel that deals a lot with grief and trauma and healing. I liked the story, but found the book to be excessively long and repetitive. If it had been shorter and moved a little more quickly I could've really loved it. I think the sex scenes were pretty good, not overly graphic but also not too tame either.

I enjoyed this one overall. I didn’t *love* it, but I’m glad that so read it. I enjoyed the build up between the MCs, but I think that they didn’t really address the issue of her sister’s death very deeply before getting into their relationship. I was rooting for them, it just felt like a more meaningful conversation was needed.

How to End a Love Story hits all emotions starting with hate with a slow burn with some spice to enjoying the end. This one had to sit with be a bit before letting the plot line take over. Struggling winter gets job moves cross country to hate new boss. Then quite gets hit by car and the story start to develop nicely.

Thank NetGalley for another amazing audio.

This book wasn’t for me. Started out with an intriguing premise- writers forced to work together 13 years after one was unintentionally involved in the death of the other’s sister- but the author never satisfactorily plumbed the depth of the struggle to deal with increasing emotional attraction to the one person most closely tied to the worst day of your life. It felt like a missed opportunity to explore two people really wrestling with that tension between guilt/anger AND intense attraction.

What’s inside:

Mental health struggles, suicide, death of a sibling.
Behind-the-scenes view of a screenwriters’ room.
NYC, New Jersey, and LA
Family dynamics and dysfunction
Child of immigrants- Chinese heritage
Forbidden love- enemies to lovers - friends with benefits.

What (didn’t) work for me:

Felt like the writer tried to unsuccessfully mash together two different genres (spicy romance and women’s fiction).
I never warmed up to the main characters- they felt disjointed.
FMC did grow but rather than writing that growth like a dimmer switch slowly illuminating a room, it read more like an on/off switch suddenly flicked on.
I never felt like I wanted to root for their relationship.

Thank you NetGalley and Avon Books for the ARC.

I really struggled to get into this. We mostly follow Helen, who is a writer going to go work on the TV show based on a series of YA books she wrote. Despite her successful career, her personal life has pretty much stayed the same since her sister died. In a twist, the person whose car hit and killed her sister is going to be working in the same writer's room. But her sister died by suicide, so it's a little bit of a more complicated puzzle.

There is a love story, it takes a long time to bloom. It's worth it, but I almost didn't make it to the beginning of the love story. It's also interesting because the writer's room is described a lot but there's not a lot of time actually spent in it, with dialogue, and I think that would have made for a different, slightly more fun book.