An emotional read with an enormously engaging tagline. Full of warmth and beauty, I can't recommend this enough.

Amazingly accomplished first novel. I didn't know where the story was going to take me next but I was happy to be taken along for the ride.

How I Lose You is a love story, told backwards. Eva’s husband Adam dies in chapter one. As Eva struggles to come to terms with her loss, we learn about their story in a series of flashbacks. Back in the present day, Eva stumbles across an email in Adam’s inbox that suggests he was hiding something. In her search to uncover his secret, Eva discovers shocking truths about herself.

I found this book difficult to read, I think due to the changing timelines and some of the subject matter. Of course that’s personal to me, and doesn’t take away the fact that this was beautiful and haunting writing.

Eva and Adam are a young married couple until the night that they go out and Eva wakes up next to Adam's body. the rest of the book traces their relationship as well as how Eva moves forward. It sounds like a good premise but I got bored very easily. I didn't really care enough about the characters to want to finish the book

I first heard of How I Lose You on Instagram, when writer Laura Jane Williams said that the main character wakes up to a dead husband on page 12, and that it wasn’t even the main event. I was immediately intrigued, and picked up Kate McNaughton’s debut novel wondering what would unfold after page 12.

How I Lose You is a love story told backwards, one that begins with Adam’s death and goes on to show how his wife Eva deals with her grief in the aftermath. We see their love story grow through flashbacks to their past, from their early days as students at university to their adult lives juggling demanding jobs and family time. But there’s something Adam wasn’t telling her, and Eva sets out to find out what it is – with surprising results.

While the story itself is beautiful, the way Kate writes about Eva’s grief, and her relationship with Adam and their tight-knit group of friends is even more so, adding to the unconventional structure of the novel and making it even more moving.

Kate. McNaughton has found such a unique way of telling this story. Starting at the end of their relationship, and in such a heartbreaking way, means throughout the book you can look at their story in a very different way.

The narrative splits between the aftermath, and Eva looking back at how their relationship panned out. The characters and their emotions are written beautifully, which means difficult topics are handled well.

I highly recommend this book, just be prepared for an emotional read.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy of this book.

I requested this mainly based on the tagline: "This is the story of Adam and Eve. It ends on page twelve." I mean, that is just brilliant and how could I not? But the book just was not for me. I made it about 50% in when I decided to call it quits. I want to emphasise that this is not a bad book at all. It just did not work for me. I expected something different and I thought the playing with different timelines and the framing device would work for me brilliantly (I do love stories told unchronologically!) but it just didn't. I think my main problem was that the story itself was kind of flat and uninteresting. I am just not that interested in people falling in love (at least not in books). The grief part of the books worked better for me: here I thought the circular way Kate McNaughton writes her paragraphs was done beautifully. Sadly this part of the book took the backseat to the love story. I also struggled with the dialogue a whole lot and did not think it felt quite natural. I don't usually focus on dialogue in books but this just turned me off.

So overall, just not my type of book and very different to what I expected.

I didn't finish this one, I'm afraid. Maybe will try another time but I just couldn't get into it. Thanks for allowing me to review though, much appreciated as always :)

Kate McNaughton’s debut novel, How I Lose You, is utterly devastating by page 12. After a tipsy night with friends, Eva and Adam head to bed feeling happy and full of the promise of married life. When Eva awakes the next morning to a terrible discovery, it seems that their story is over. I must admit that those first pages made my heart ache and I could not control the tears that threatened to spill over with every word I read. McNaughton is not cruel and unforgiving, however; starting from this terrible moment, she slowly and carefully weaves the tapestry of Eva and Adam’s life together, each thread as rich as the last. Through this emotive narrative Eva becomes a friend and the reader makes each discovery about her relationship with Adam, and her own life, alongside her.

McNaughton’s depiction of grief and mourning is stunning and thoroughly empathetic. As Eva struggles to come to terms with the life changing events of that Friday night, she looks back over a life she thought she knew; her history, her relationships, her identity. Eva stumbles across some secrets that Adam kept, some truths she cannot face, and jumps to the wildest conclusions – what was Adam really doing on his frequent trips to Berlin? Who is the mysterious woman that crops up in his research files and emails? McNaughton exposes the idea that we never fully know the person we share our lives with; our homes, experiences, hearts. They always have a secret side, a past you can never know, thoughts you can never share. Both unsettling and honest, a series of revelations lead Eva to understand more about the man she loved, but less about herself. Her memories of Adam and the life they shared become fixed, stronger, rooted, but her own identity and the history it is based upon, told and re-told with passion and pride, crumbles and weakens. The most startling and fascinating discoveries made by Eva are about her own past and future. Through loss, Eva reconnects with Adam and finally discovers her true self.

How I Lose You is a complex and multi-layered novel. Each setting – London, Berlin, New York – is richly depicted with sensory detail. Place and memory intertwine, until they are both inextricably linked; the lives of others who occupy these spaces become part of Eva’s own. Eva is a rounded character, full of complexities, insecurities, inconsistencies. Her journey from that Friday night, back through her past and into her future, is poignant, revealing; she learns stark truths about herself, and reflects on memories that may have not been quite as they seem. Throughout it all, Adam is a constant, and their relationship is played out in thoughtful scenes, loving and tender. Their bond is deep despite attempts by external forces to break it. McNaughton uses How I Lose You to remind readers to live each moment fully and to share life with one another, as it is terribly fleeting. Although this is a novel about loss, trust, identity and history, it is centred around love, for others and for yourself. It is beautiful, both devastating and gentle; an uplifting novel that finds hope in the darkest of life’s moments.



How I Lose You is published on 8th March 2018 by Transworld Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK. Thank you to Transworld Publishers and NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

How I Lose You is a clever and well-crafted novel with an extraordinary and deftly handled narrative structure. Beginning at the end of Eva and Adam’s story it flashes back to fill in their history whilst also propelling us forward as Eva adjusts to her new life.

It is very difficult to categorise How I Lose You, on the one hand it is a love story – we meet Eva and Adam as undergraduates, we see them as friends, we see them fall for each other but then, something awful happens and it becomes a book about the beauty of life, melancholy and love. It is very literary in places, words are used to great effect and there are some wonderfully beautiful passages and moments.

This is a book about grief, loss and love, and although it is both sad and devastating, I found it very uplifting. I do feel though that I didn’t feel what I was ‘supposed’ (for want of a better word) to feel when reading this book. Others have said that they were overwhelmed by it and found it incredibly emotional, and whilst I did find it extremely sad in places, I didn’t feel the gut-punch of grief that comes with becoming emotionally invested in a character in a book only to have them taken away from me. The back-to-front narrative structure meant that I knew the end and I found the novel to be incredibly bittersweet. It got deep into my head and into my heart.

Eva and Adam are both compelling, well written characters – as is their relationship. Kate McNaughton has a knack for writing the nuances of relationships, we are voyeurs in the will-they-won’t-they of friends Harry and Carmen, we feel Eva’s worry at meeting parents for the first time and the adjustment in their social circle after losing Adam is subtly and adeptly handled. I loved that the characters were not black and white, Eva in particular deserves sympathy but she does surprising and upsetting things that test your sympathy for her.

This is a very clever book which I gobbled up in a few hours. It is a beautiful, deep and emotional read. I loved it.

I probably read about half of this book, but reluctantly I gave up. Its beautifully written, but for me, just too melancholic.

Some of the most keenly observed, and accurately depicted scenes of grief I’ve seen on paper. So accurate, in fact, that they feel as though they’re happening in front of you.

The observations that pepper the novel- meeting your partner’s parents for the first time, the interior conflicts that come with falling in love- are very acute. The book’s interspersed with what are essentially single page essays on grief and loss- tightly crafted and utterly apt.

Kate McNaughton is undoubtedly one to watch. Her background in filmmaking is obvious- look out for an adaptation of ‘How I Lose You’ soon.