Out of Love

When Hazel Hayes announced her debut novel on her insta, I was really intrigued, especially by the idea of a love story told in reverse. A refreshing take on romances that I couldn’t miss, even though I don’t read much in that genre. People also seemed to really *really* like it, so I hoped I would too, but… I didn’t. Not really. Hazel Hayes knows how to write, no doubt. Yet, the story was mostly telling and not showing, which prevented me from relating to the protagonist or any other character as I couldn’t truly get in their shoes. I was expecting to cry and to hurt like many readers, but I felt nothing deep enough for it to happen. It was so frustrating! Also, if the idea is one of the things that made me pick up the book, I feel like it didn’t work for me. We all know the story starts with the breakup and goes back in time, to the day Theo and the protagonist met. Obviously, knowing that, I was expecting more. More as to why they had fallen out of love and why they had fallen in love in the first place. I needed something to keep me interested in their relationship, something more than just telling too. Yet, it never happened. And as I understood it won’t as I kept reading, I lost interest. It also felt like reading a memoir instead of a novel. The protagonist doesn’t have a name (if I do remember well), however I couldn’t picture anyone but Hazel. An Irish young woman, ginger, of the same age, sharing the same tattoo, who are both battling with depression & anxiety and who's going through a breakup? Hm. Even if Hazel promoted it as a novel and even if some parts have been romanticised, it just felt reading her life and… it felt wrong. It definitively kept me out of the story as well. And that’s probably why she only scratched the surface regarding feelings and explanations. Perhaps I would have liked Out of Love if it had been truly fictious and if it had dived deep into the whys the relationship ended. However, I still liked her writing style — it’s promising and can only improve. I may pick up her next novel if she ever writes one. ↠ 3/5 ⭐️