“What if you fell in love... and then he disappeared?”

With all the thrillers, and crime noir I read, it was quite fitting that I went for some good old fashioned romance as my next read. With all the craziness going on in the world, it was a breath of fresh air to feel warm and fuzzy feelings. Lia Louis’ “Eight Perfect Hours” offers this and more.

Noelle Butterby is a thirty-something carer for her Mum. Her life has stalled, she’s just come out of a long-term relationship with her childhood sweetheart, and she feels like her life is going nowhere. But one snowy evening Noelle meets Sam, and their lives collide in ways they both could never have anticipated. They spend eight perfect hours stranded together believing that they will never see each other again. Soon their time together doesn’t seem quite so accidental as their lives both become entangled in ways they never expected…

‘Eight Perfect Hours’ was the pick me up I didn’t know I needed. Every page was filled with warm and pure goodness.

If like me, you believe in fate, in being where you were meant to be at the right time then this book is for you. If you’re a skeptic, and quite frankly an un-feeling cynic then I’d give it a miss because we don’t need that kind of negativity here.

‘Eight Perfect Hours’ is a story about hope, loss, grief and feeling lost in life. Lia Louis tells Noelle’s story beautifully and with such a rawness that I was rooting for her from page one. This was my first book from Louis, but I guarantee you I’ll be reading more of her works. Simply brilliant, heartwarming and a must read.

‘Eight Perfect Hours’ is available now on kindle and e-book, and published on August 19th, Or if you can’t wait, you can download the ebook now for 99p on Amazon (For a limited time only, so hurry).

What if you fell in love...

... and then he disappeared?


When Noelle and Sam's lives collide one snowy evening, they spend eight perfect hours stuck side by side believing that they'll never see each other again.

But soon their lives become entangled in ways they never expected - and it's going to change everything...

Thanks to Netgalley and Review for an early copy of this book in return for an honest review. You would think we would know by know about the emotional journey hat Lia leads us on but no, here I am, sitting in wonderment again. Another fantastic book that made me laugh and cry and be amazed at the high quality of book we are allowed to read. Simply fantastic, I loved it.

This Book tells the story of Noelle who is stranded in her car on a snowy stand still motorway with a dead phone,who on her way home after going to her old college who has dug up a time capsule after 15 years & Noelle finds a letter that her friend daisy write for her in the capsule but there isn’t a camera with undeveloped photos with the letter ? Where is this ?

The college say that it may be in the other time capsule that they haven’t dug up due to the bad weather but who knows , sadly daisy has died so reading this letter brings comfort but also sadness to Noelle life that daisy isn’t here to sat what she pretected 15 years ago for Noelle has come true, has it ?

Daisy camera which was full of 24 undeveloped photos wasn’t in the envelope which the letter was

Whilst stuck on the motorway Noelle gets a stranger who’s American who is in the car next door come over to Noelle to ask if she needs any help ,she explains that she needs to charge her mobile & get in touch with her mum as her mum who doesn’t go out only to put the bins &hairdressers will be worried , the stranger in the car offers that Noelle can use his charger & welcome to sit in his car as Noelle tells the stranger all about the broken faults of her car

Noelle takes the stranger up on his offer sits in his grown up car as she calls it’s with the heated seats whilst charging her phone, age finds out the American stranger is called Sam & is from the coast of Portland , Sam is on way to airport to fly home , Noelle 30 mins from home

Noelle opens up about her mum having a stroke 6 years ago not been the same since , Sam says he works as a mountaineer

What follows is an Amazing story of how Fate works and not to be scared of the future , I won’t give anymore spoilers away but if you Loved Dear Emmie Blue you going to love this book more

Many thanks to Netgalley & Orion Books for the Arc of this book in exchange for this honest review.

This was a really sweet and heartfelt book for the most part. I really enjoyed how different layers of the story were slowly revealed, which gradually made me feel closer to and root for the main character, Unfortunately, though it did end up feeling a bit flat and slightly dull. Maybe I wasn’t in the right head space for this to be a 5*, but the characterisation and the emotional scenes were so good it definitely deserves a 4!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Do you believe in fate? Well if not then after reading this, you will! The romance of 2021 – this is the perfect book for a one-sitting reading session. It will pull at your heart but also have you smiling in places too. A perfect blend of emotion and humour. Beautiful twists of fate and entwined history are the underlying themes throughout and you won’t be able to put the book down until you’ve finished.

You will burst with pride by the end as you follow beautiful personalities on difficult journeys – not least Noelle – who is a fantastic and very relatable main character.

This is raw, human and totally compelling. You won’t be able to put the book down until you finish it and even then you’ll feel oddly bereft!

This is a beautiful read from Lia Louis featuring downtrodden Noelle who kept her life small after the tragic death of her friend in their teens and Sam who has been unable to settle anywhere since he lost his cousin in his teens, an event he feels responsible for. A heavy snowstorm leads them to spend 8 hours together when their cars get stuck amongst motorway traffic but when the road clears they move on and away from each other.

This is an unexpected but credible look at destiny and also the impact a traumatic event has on who you are, the choices you make and the life you lead. Noelle was a beautiful person with a lot of loyalty and some fabulous friends, we only saw Sam through Noelle’s eyes and it might have been good to hear some of his thoughts but he was still a strong character and their stories intertwined wonderfully.

A gorgeous tale of two strangers thrust into each other’s lives by pure accident during a snowy drive and discovering just how right it feels, only to go back to their regular lives...

Whilst returning home after a somewhat failed college reunion Noelle Butterby is stuck in a snowstorm that has closed the M4. Feeling emotional about her evening, worried about her mum and not being able to charge her phone leads to her having a meltdown at her steering wheel. The stranger in the car next door comes to her rescue to check that she is OK and whether she needs anything. Eventually giving in and asking to charge her phone so she can call her mum, She sits in his car and they begin eight hours of chatting, crosswords, hard shoulder walks and snoozing.

Saying goodbye as the road reopens she doesn't expect to ever bump into Sam again (the American mountaineering stranger). It is a small world after all and their paths unexpectantly cross over the coming weeks and months.

Noelle tends to shoulder everyone's problems around her she has pressed pause on her life something which lead to the end of her long term relationship with Ed who she had dated since college. But with her mum relying on her, her brother away more often than he is home, her best friend struggling with motherhood and Noelle still not over the guilt she feels towards her friend Daisy's death in college.

As Noelle and Sam's lives intertwine they wonder whether it is fate or coincidence that they appear at hospitals, cleaning jobs and events. A journey of self-discovery for Noelle as well as buying into the red thread love theory her friend Daisy used to talk about.

I’d like to thank NetGalley and Orion for approving me for an ARC of this book. I discovered Lia Louis last year when I read Dear Emmie Blue and loved it. My fellow friend and blogger Meg Readz is also a huge fan or her work so we decided to read this as a buddy read along with Meg’s lovely mum Clare. I actually have them to thank for introducing me to Emmie Blue last year.

I finished this last week and I have been trying to find a way to write a review that does this book justice. It’s not often that I finish a book and I’m left speechless but Lia Louis has managed it.

To put it simply this book was utterly beautiful. The characters were well developed, rounded, flawed and completely relatable. Noelle, our main character, was so sweet, caring and a person you felt you were better for knowing. She put everyone and everything before herself and never seemed to complain about the hand she had been dealt. She was very timid to start with and as the story progresses you realise why. However, just like her floristry dreams you see her bloom and become this confident, strong willed, fearless person. The scenes between her and her mum were tender and tearful but as a reader I was so proud of them both for what they had achieved.

Sam was an absolute gem! I know nobody is perfect but he definitely ticked a lot of boxes. The chance meetings between Sam and Noelle were lovely and I adored watching this slow brooding romance develop. Obviously I was willing them to be together through the whole book, after all I’m a romantic at heart. If you are expecting a predictable, boy meets girl romance though I’m afraid this isn’t it. This is so much more.

What I hadn’t expected when embarking on this read was the element of mystery surrounding Noelle’s friend Daisy. This was a pleasantly surprising storyline that inevitably played a vital role in the story. Lia Louis also introduced several themes such as post natal depression, parental relationships, agoraphobia, to name a few. All of these themes were well thought out, delivered in a natural way that gave some of our secondary characters a little of the spotlight. I personally really enjoyed Charlie’s story and she was my favourite of the secondary characters.

Suffice to say I loved it! The final revelations were both shocking and beautiful. I wept at the emotional moments and couldn’t help but have a huge smile on my face by the end.

Fabulous easy read story of Noelle and Sam who meet in a traffics jam during a snowstorm. As their lives get entangled, we follow the characters and fall in love with them.
Great summer read. Loved it.

I am a huge fan of Lia Louis’ books after loving Dear Emmie Blue and Somewhere Close To Happy, so was really excited to read Eight Perfect Hours. It is such a beautiful and moving story with characters I deeply cared about and was invested in right from the outset.

We meet Noelle when she is stranded in her car on a snowy, stand-still motorway on her way home from her college reunion. Her mobile has died and she has tears in her eyes after reading a letter that her best friend Daisy wrote to her before she died (a letter which has been kept safe in a time capsule for fifteen years).

That night, her life collides with Sam’s, as he too is stuck in his car on the motorway. They end up spending eight perfect hours stuck side by side, believing that they’ll never see each other again. However, the universe has different plans and soon their lives become entangled in ways they never expected...

I absolutely adored this story and really love the ancient Chinese proverb that is referred to within the book, of how there is an invisible red thread connecting people who are destined to meet, no matter the time, place or circumstance. The thread might stretch or get tangled, but it will never break.

I was swept up by Noelle’s emotions as she tries to navigate her feelings towards Sam, whilst also dealing with a face from her past being back in her hometown. I really liked getting to learn more about her family too and she has such a kind heart, having made many sacrifices, for her mum in particular.

My heart well and truly fell for Sam! He is such a kind, thoughtful and caring man and I Iove how Lia Louis always creates characters you care so deeply about. I liked the parallels between the emotions and feelings both he and Noelle were trying to process and it was interesting to learn of the similar experiences they have had in their pasts of loss and the guilt they have always had to live with as a result.

The reveal at the end of what happened the night Noelle lost her best friend Daisy was so incredibly clever and I didn’t see this coming. It was such a brilliant moment of the book.

I also loved the friendship Noelle has with Charlie and her partner Theo (their baby Petal was so cute) and how much support they are able to provide to one another. I am so glad Noelle was able to follow a huge passion/dream of hers too within the book.

I have enjoyed Eight Perfect Hours so much and didn’t want it to have to come to an end, even if the ending did leave me with the biggest smile on my face!

From the author of 'Dear Emmie Blue' comes another heart-warming romance about finding love where you least expect it and the beautiful magic of fate…

Louis’s skill with the plot is incredible! So many twists and turns, unforeseen links and surprises. All ends are tied up beautifully, and in classic Louis style! I absolutely love the way she plays the hand of fate in her books – for me it’s the best part. Working her magic with those split second chances, decisions and encounters and weaving them all together to leave a trail. So clever.

Noelle is the kind of protagonist you are immediately rooting for. We meet her at her lowest, thoroughly lost and seemingly out of luck. We get to watch her bloom like the flowers she so loves and grow in confidence and personality. A truly uplifting story. A story of family and friends, a story of believing in yourself, multiple chances and a reminder that it’s never to late to find love.

Perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes, Paige Toon and Emily Henry.

This is a truly wonderful love story about fate. It’s super easy to read and to follow. I loved Noelle and Sam as characters and was willing them together every step of the way. I thought the ending would be predictable and underwhelming but it just got better and better.

I’d recommend this story if your a romantic at heart.

A wonderfully happy gift of a book to read- leaving you uplifting and excited about life's adventures.

We first meet Noelle as she is leaving a high school reunion which hasn't worked out the way it should; stuck in a terrible snow storm rather than getting home to her mum, Noelle has time to think about her life a bit more. She's is stuck in a rut of caring for her mother after a stroke. As her brother gets to lives his rock star dreams, Noelle carefully measures every minute of the day to make sure all of her responsibilities have been met. . She meets the gorgeous Sam in the most unlikely of places, and they click straight away over eight perfect hours -but they are never going to meet again. Or are they? They find each other in the most unlikely places - but life isnt as simple as that, is it?

Noelle and Sam meet when an unexpected blizzard stops traffic on the motorway for several hours. During those titular Eight Perfect Hours the two of them seem to get closer, but then each leaves without any way to contact the other. Through lots of chance meetings they see each other again and get even closer to each other.

The plot was rather predictable, still enjoyable. I liked Sam's character, and Ed's, but I thought the MC Noelle was rather a doormat. She blamed herself for all the things that went wrong around her and blamed Ed for leaving her, when she was the one not willing to get out of her comfort zone.

Heart warming read although the story was a little easy to second guess it was a sweet romance great to use for escapism.

Sometimes there is nothing that quite hits the spot like a cute romance and I know so many of you will agree that long summer days are perfect for them.

Noelle is on her way back from a college reunion when she and hundreds of other drivers get stuck on the motorway in a blizzard for hours. With her phone battery dead, she has no way of getting hold of her mum who desperately needs her at home. Until a handsome, kind, American named Sam knocks on her window and lets her know that he has a phone charger in his car. Over the next wonderful eight hours, Noelle and Sam get to know each other. But when the road clears, they part ways and Noelle is sure she’ll never see Sam again. Little does she know that the universe seems to have other plans.

Noelle is a cleaner but she has dreams of having her own floristry business. The fact that her mum depends on her so much is the reason that she hasn’t pursued that dream. My heart broke for her whenever she mentioned how much she wishes her life were different. I wanted to tell her that her mum would want her to live her life and would be horrified to realise that she was holding her daughter back but I know that sense of familial duty sometimes completely overshadows everything else.

There is a lot of anxiety representation in this book and it was done really well. Noelle suffers from panic attacks and although they have the potential to be debilitating, she deals with it in a way that’s clear she has been dealing with them for a long time. Her mother is also very mentally unstable and the effects of that on Noelle and the rest of her family and friends ripple through the book. Anxiety is an incredibly contagious disease and that’s something that Lia Louis illustrates perfectly in this story.

Noelle’s best friend Charlie also suffers from postnatal depression. That’s not something that I’ve experienced, so I can’t say whether it’s good representation but it was handled very sensitively. Charlie seeks out help and doesn’t fail to love her baby Petal, so I like to think that this strand of the book is full of realistic hope too.

Noelle split with her boyfriend of 12 years, Ed, two years before when he left for a job in the US. However, now Ed is back and she has some conflicted feelings about seeing him again. Because they were together for so long, she feels that she kind of owes something to him and the time they had together. I wasn’t convinced that she still had true feelings for him though and I was a little concerned about the way things started to go between them.

I could tell almost instantly that they weren’t good together too, so I spent quite a lot of time trying to whisper to Noelle to back away! Although he never explicitly said it, there seemed to be an undertone to Ed’s words that Noelle wasn’t driven enough or that her life was stagnant. This isn’t necessarily inaccurate but I felt that he was pushing her a little too hard when she perhaps wasn’t quite ready. I didn’t like that he seemed to be making her constantly question her mistakes and fit into a mould that all of Ed’s family fit into.

In the background of everything, Noelle is always thinking about her friend Daisy. Daisy died in a tragic car accident at the age of 18 and Noelle often reflects on how unfair it was that Daisy never got to live her life. I think she does feel a degree of guilt and that might go some way to explaining why Noelle doesn’t grab life with both hands. She has always been grateful for what she has because Daisy never got a life at all. I think so many people who lost someone important at a key developmental stage in their lives will definitely be able to relate to this feeling. Daisy’s ghost seems to be present for a lot of the book and at the end, that made an enormous amount of beautiful sense.

A lot of the comic relief comes from Noelle’s brother Dilly. He’s in a rock band that tours around the UK and therefore isn’t often home. This is why Noelle does the lion’s share of their mum’s care and there were points where I was frustrated with Dilly for not stepping up. However, I laughed at several points when he was around and he has a cheeky, endearing energy. By the end of the book, I had a feeling that he had conceded to help Noelle out a bit more and allow her to flourish.

Watching Noelle grow throughout the course of the narrative was so much fun. She starts to realise that she doesn’t have to conform to a certain life path and that her life is entirely hers to create. I also loved witnessing the moment she realises that everyone is actually very similar. People are people and they’re actually all just as messy and confused as she is. I feel like when this revelation finally dawns on a person, their life becomes so much easier because they become free of the pressure to live up to a certain arbitrary standard.

Eight Perfect Hours is a beautiful, heartwarming story of destiny and finding your right path. Sam and Noelle keep meeting in what seems like the most unlikeliest of places and there was something that just felt like it was so much more than a series of coincidences. There’s a magic behind the writing that is so warm and charming and I now fully believe in fate.

I couldn't put this book down, I loved the unravelling of the story and how their two lives were linked and fate kept bringing them together. Was lovely to read and the characters were so likeable and alive. Wanted a happy ending for them all.

4.5 stars
I've not read any of Lia Louis' previous books but I was hooked as soon as I started reading this. And I quickly devoured it in less than 48 hours.
This was an enjoyable, life affirming rom com, even if it did end as you might expect. But what else could really happen in a book like this.
I enjoyed the use of supporting characters like her friends (specifically Charlie) and family.
And there really is a lot crammed into this book, above and beyond the rom com element.
It deals with loss, grief, postpartum depression, caring for a parent who has suffered a stroke and living life to the fullest, along with so much more.
Certain things felt a bit forced in terms of missed connections, like the heather keyring and some of the other times that they bumped into one another. But that's not to say that I didn't enjoy the serendipitous story.
It was also really frustrating seeing how her brother's life compares to hers and dealing with their mother. But I am used to being the responsible older sister to a younger brother who gets away with anything and everything. So it didn't feel all that outlandish to see how he behaved and how I felt about him throughout.
I was rooting for Noelle, particularly when it came to her flower business, even if I couldn't root for Sam and Noelle quite as much as I could have. I think a lot of that has to do with him feeling unavailable, to me, because of his ties to Jenna. And sometimes Noelle even felt a tiny bit stalker-ish with him.
But I enjoyed it nonetheless.
If you're a fan of the likes of Sophie Cousens (particularly her book This Time Next Year), Beth O'Leary or Lindsey Kelk, I can see you really enjoying Lia Louis' writing style and this story in particular.
I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for what she does next and can't wait to read more from her in the future.
Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars
I read this book as a way to relieve stress from exams, and what do you know, it was perfect for this. Eight Perfect Hours is a story of coincidences, of chances lost and regained once more. From the cover, it looked like the perfect light-hearted rom-com and it was that, but it was also unexpectedly emotional. The romance wasn't the central focus of the story; it was more on the side. The focus mainly lay on Noelle and how she was struggling with multiple things in her life, but at the end of the story, we see her finally accept that she is talented at arranging flowers and that is a talent that she can take forward as a career. And of course, at the end of the story, she gets together with Sam, her love interest. I found Sam to be incredibly kind and funny and the perfect love interest that I wanted to read about.

All in all, Eight Perfect Hours is the perfect read, for when you just wanna sit back and relax and do nothing else.