Hello Stranger by Rachel Marks a NetGalley review. Jamie and Lucy knew from the beginning that they were meant to be, they are completely different but somehow it works apart from one major thing they have different opinions on, which they think they can agree on but can they? Before you do read this be aware that it covers some subjects that can be triggering for some for example baby loss. I am a fan of this authors however this just missed the mark for me sadly. At points I found it a bit boring and it seem a long read. It’s a very honest read, the author doesn’t sugar coat the issues that are raised in this book. Jamie wants children but Lucy doesn’t ever and I don’t think I’ve read a book from this perspective before. Jamie wants kids and Lucy doesn’t ever, Jamie’s prepared not to have kids because he loves Lucy so much. That’s a huge difference in opinion and not necessarily meaning a happy ending. It’s great hearing the story from both characters sides and I could see both of there opinions. Ultimately it’s a sad read and for these characters what happens to them in some respects is a case of it’s meant to be. It’s not a predictable read and for me not a book I enjoyed. Don’t get me wrong I didn’t hate this book and I wanted Lucy and Jamie to be together but the best I can describe this book is ‘it was ok, a nice read and I’m glad I’ve read it’, however it’s not the best book by this author and I really enjoyed her other books. I won’t be recommending this going forward. For me it’s a ⭐️⭐️

I was initially drawn to this after reading Rachel’s previous book Until Next Weekend and enjoyed reading this love story between Lucy and Jamie. Rachel really knows how to pull on the heart strings as this was quite an emotional and tender read.

Thank you Michael Joseph for letting me read this ahead of publication

I have read other books by Rachel Marks and really enjoyed them so was looking forward to this one. Have to say, this lived up to the others and didn't disappoint. Lucy & Jamie both know they have found "The One" when they meet; however, there is one very big stumbling block for their future together. They try to get around it and think it will be fine. However, Mother Nature throws them a curve ball (which I really didn't see coming!) and the story reveals how they deal with it & move forward from there.

I was struggling to see how this story was going to conclude - there only seemed to be one outcome but I have to say that the ending was great, even if it was not how you would really like it to be (hopefully that will make sense when you read it!). The book dealt with a really good issue - not everyone wants or can have children (including someone in my own family) and I completely agree that it is taken for granted that that is the way all woman want / will go. Well done, Rachel, for writing about this subject! Would highly recommend this book - read it!

Thank you to Net Galley and the publishers for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review, which is what I have given.

Oh god this book broke me and I'm still not over it.

I have yet to read a Rachel Marks book that I didn't love. This one did not disappoint despite the fact that it left me sobbing.

Hello, Stranger is a beautiful yet heartbreaking story which takes you on a journey, starting from the end of Lucy and Jamie's relationship. I love that we got to see glimpses of the past from both of their points of view and I quickly grew to love these characters.

I could talk about this one for hours but you all need to go read it. Also please be aware there are trigger warnings for this one!

Please go read this but make sure you have tissues at the ready.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A very beautifully written book gave me a mixed bag of emotions whilst reading it.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Rachel Marks – this is her third book and what a book! After Saturdays at Noon I firmly made up my mind to read any book she has published and have to say I have enjoyed each one thoroughly so far. Her writing is refreshing in that the characters feel real and fully rounded, there’s emotional depth, and heavy topics are written about skillfully and with empathy.

The story alternates between Lucy’s and Jamie’s perspective, each has their own distinct voice yet both relatable, even if you don’t agree with their opinion you can still see each character’s point of view. It starts in the present time, with the two of them splitting up, and then the rest of the story fills in how they got to this point.
This particular story was close to my heart, a subject not often spoken or written about, which I won’t write here as it reveals the entire storyline. I think it’s something which could be very triggering for some people yet it’s written very sensitively and from my experience, accurately too. I particularly liked that Lucy’s character didn’t come across as immature and selfish, she comes from a standpoint that some people in real life have a hard time dealing with and I found that was dealt with sensitively.

Hello, Stranger will break your heart and make it whole. it's a book you will read in one sitting because you won't want to put it down. It's a real romance that will restore your faith in love.

4****
Wow! This book was incredible. I couldn’t put it down. It’s my second book by Rachel and it won’t be my last. This book is a tear jerker - pass me the tissues kind of read. It had my heart racing, eyes hooked and tears streaming throughout. I’d like to thank the publisher and net galley for giving me an advance copy.

Hello, Stranger is a love story that begins at the ending of Lucy and Jamie's relationship and then alternates with their dual perspectives from the time they met to the ending of their love story. This was a lovely read; the main characters are complex and likeable, although I did take longer to warm to Lucy. The authors prose flows well and over the course of 24 hours I was completely caught up in Lucy and Jamie's story and rooting for them both.
At the heart of their break up is an issue that is rarely written about in fiction, and I found myself empathising with both characters.
I loved the Gloucestershire setting, although I found it unbelievable that Lucy could afford to buy a gorgeous house in a Stroud village and go traveling regularly on a bookshop assistant's salary!
An emotional read with a hugely satisfying ending. Recommended.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

Great read!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

This books starts with Lucy & Jamie breaking up and we then go through the book from each other perspective of them on their first date to when they broke up.

The book is sad and also we see how the story unfolds how they ended up breaking up even though they still loved each other very much. Also it is like opposites attract while Lucy is adventurous and likes to visit different countries while Jamie is not your typical man he seems very romantic.

I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it.

It was well written and did not want to put the book down.

Hello Stranger

Rachel Marks writes books that are deceptively simple, they flow well and it’s easy to find yourself six chapters in and fully immersed within the character’s world before you know it. Her novels are probably categorised as Contemporary Romance, but that suggests they follow a formula set down as far back as Shakespeare - from boy meets girl, through obstacles and eventually to the ubiquitous happy ending. I think there’s more to her work than that. Marks specialises in the messiness and complexity of modern relationships, tackling issues like mental health, addiction, divorce, co-parenting and bereavement. She has proved herself to be psychologically astute when it comes to the dynamics of relationships and families, and when I pick up one of her novels I know it’s going to be about relationships, but always with a twist or different perspective. Hello Stranger is no exception as we meet Lucy and Jamie, talking in bed one morning like any other couple. Except Lucy and Jamie are the loves of each other’s life and they are breaking up.

The book splits from this point, into the before of their break-up and the after. We get to see them meet for the first time and take the first tentative steps into their relationship towards the morning we’ve just witnessed. In between are the chapters looking at the aftermath from both points of view. I promise you, you will read this absolutely rooting for this couple just as I did. It’s heartbreaking to find that at the centre of their break-up is the question of whether they want to have children or not; Jamie does, but Lucy doesn’t. Lucy is something of a free spirit, who doesn’t really want the conventional life that she’s seen play out for her sister, who is married with two children. Lucy loves being an aunty more than anything, but has never felt maternal or had a sense of her biological clock ticking. She knows that people think she’ll change her mind one day, but Lucy doesn’t think so. It’s not a flippant choice, it’s something she’s thought a lot about and weighed up the pros and cons endlessly. She knows that her choice makes her unnatural in a lot of people’s eyes and she knows how much it disappoints her mum, who would love more grandchildren. She can’t feel what they want her to feel and it would be wrong to have children just to make others feel comfortable. I really felt for her, especially as she goes into the dating world knowing this about herself. I can’t have children and have an invisible disability so I was always concerned about when to slip this information into conversation. It’s not really a first date type of topic, when you want to be thinking of nothing more than whether there’s a spark between you. Yet, when is the right time to drop a bombshell like this on someone? If you wait till you know it’s a long term relationship haven’t you misled them? The problem is there are some things that society tends to assume about young women; they will be healthy and they will want to have a family.

Jamie is one of life’s good guys, the sort of boyfriend who will pop to the shop to buy some tampons and throw in a bar of chocolate without being asked. He’s thoughtful, open and honest. He does have baggage though. He lost his father at a very young age and still carries some guilt that he was not there when he died suddenly from a heart attack. His family also suffered the loss of a child, when his brother Thomas was stillborn. Children are an emotive subject for Jamie and he’s always known he wants them, to create a family of his own, now that it’s just him and his mum. He finds Lucy a challenge, but in a good way. She pushes him out of his comfort zone by taking him on an activity holiday in Andalusia where they go rafting over rapids. At first he’s nervous, but he finds it exhilarating. In fact Lucy is an exhilarating sort of person, she’s lively, talkative and full of ideas and plans for the future. It’s not long before he’s in love with her and he knows this is different from anything he’s felt before. He wants to be with this girl for life. When they finally discuss children, it’s clear this is something he has assumed she would want in the future. He’s known that travelling the world is important to her and he wants to discover new places and have adventures with her, but knows that realistically parenthood will curb that wanderlust. Despite finding themselves constantly back at this impasse, they don’t break-up. Lucy is as in love with Jamie as he is with her. As their relationship continues to go through milestones the question becomes ever more important, but it is essentially unsolvable. No one can compromise without sacrificing the life they want.

Is Lucy enough for Jamie, or will he come to resent her as the reality of being without children starts to sink in? Lucy can’t imagine having children for Jamie’s sake, wouldn’t she start to resent them for the changes in her life and the loss of the life she wanted. Maybe they just aren’t right for each other, despite the deepening feelings. For Lucy, Jamie is enough and she imagines a great life just the two of them. Lucy is immovable and it is up to Jamie to choose, but he can’t imagine life without Lucy in it. We follow every heart rending discussion that leads us to that morning in bed, but who will make the choice? It will take a catalyst to break the deadlock between them and throughout the book I could feel the tension rising towards that moment. I only know that once the choice was made I was desperately sad and kept hoping they would come back together, because this was a romance after all and don’t they always have happy endings?

I applaud the author for creating a character who has a point of view that many people still find difficult to understand, but making her sympathetic and loveable. She knows all the arguments and insults that people will throw at her for her choice; unnatural, cold, not a real woman, selfish. I have had the selfish argument mentioned to me in a discussion about the different siblings in a family. The childless couple were branded as really selfish, spending all their time playing golf, going on cruises and suiting themselves. I was dumbfounded by this argument that only by having children can we be truly selfless and found myself asking whether her children had wanted to be born? I kept hearing her say ‘we wanted’ children and surely that’s no less selfish than someone wanting to travel the world. People have children because they ‘want’ them, not because they’re doing the world a favour. If we stop using emotive words and assuming there’s one right way of being a woman, the decision to have children is simply a choice.

I have friends on both sides of this life choice: people who can’t have children; people who’ve sacrificed their desire for a family to stay with a partner who didn’t want them; people who thought they didn’t want children then became pregnant accidentally; people who’ve broken up with a partner who didn’t want children. There are also people like me, who lost several pregnancies, haven’t had children, then became a step-mum at 45. It’s never an easy road and I think we need to be more respectful of other people’s choices on this issue. Not everyone wants to be a parent and that’s okay. I felt sad for Lucy, terribly so, but I also felt strangely proud of her for sticking to her gut instinct and not being swayed, even by the person she loved most. To leave such a beautiful and loving relationship takes such courage and I didn’t envy their eventual decision. Marks has once again written such a bittersweet novel. I love the way it delves into the complexities and assumptions around motherhood. She takes two incredibly likeable characters and places them in such an impossible situation. However, what she also does is show that time mellows all experiences, even the painful ones. There is healing there for Lucy and Jamie, whether they eventually stay together or not.

Hello Stranger is the latest release from Rachel Marks. Rachel has also written Until Next Weekend and Saturdays at Noon, both of which I’ve enjoyed.

The story follows Jamie and Lucie, fresh from the break up of their relationship. We read their story over two timelines - their present and ‘before’ their story of how they met.

After finishing this one Rachel is firmly situating herself in that position of being able to write about real life family and relationship dilemmas full of emotion and true feelings that hook you into the story and allow you to empathise with the characters.

I love with the title of a book appears in the book itself and I had a feeling this one would so I was waiting not so impatiently for it! On one hand this did turn out how I thought it would but on the other hand there was a little bit of me that was hoping for the alternative.

Ok, I was not mentally prepared for that! What began as a light-hearted romance, became so much more. The relationship between Jamie and Lucy was devastatingly beautiful. As was the rarely represented close male friendship between Jamie and Matt. I so quickly became invested in the dual point of view accounts of Jamie and Lucy falling deeply in love. I adored how we were reading it unfold in every glorious stage.

But then. My heart broke. I truly felt devastated but devoured every word without pause as the writing is just exquisite. There is deeply emotive content in this book, but it was handled with such a delicate touch.

I can't talk more about Jamie and Lucy's story because I don't want to spoil anything. What I can say is I was profoundly moved by this wonderful book, and I would so love to read more about Jamie and Lucy, yet at the same time, maybe this should be the end to their beautifully devastating story.

If I read a romance it can only be one of those romance books that's full of heartbreaks and makes me cry my heart out. So this book hit the spot perfectly!

Hello Stranger opens with Jamie and Lucy breaking up. Jeez, I'm welling up again just typing that!

We don't know why they've broken up but there feels something strange about the way they are doing it. The story is then told in alternating chapters between Lucy and Jamie with flashbacks to when they first met, leading up to the break up.

Whilst I found Lucy slightly difficult to warm to at times, this book truly captured my heart and made me so emotional. Ok, I was a total wreck lying in bed at 3am bawling my eyes out. It's a year jerker guys!

I wish I could say what this book was about, but it would ruin it if I did. Suffice to say, it's an important topic that I think should be talked about more and I really enjoyed reading something a bit different.

I've enjoyed all of Rachel Marks' books but this one is definitely my favourite. I'm going to have to treat myself to a physical copy I think!

Well this book certainly wasn’t the stereotypical romance I was expecting! I actually found the story very sad and I was secretly hoping that the happy ending I wanted would occur. As it happened, the ending wasn’t sad it just wasn’t what I expected. I really disliked Lucy as a character, I tried to like her but I just couldn’t! She was just so cold at times. Heartbreaking yet clever plot line which I’ll still recommend to everyone even though it emotionally destroyed me!

This is an unusual romance because it begins at the end, with Jamie and Lucy separating and she moves out of their house. We’re then taken back to where it all began, their tentative first date, their compatibility but also why they cannot be together, as much as they love each other.

This is not a new story and actually, that might be why it works. I recognised lots of parts of this, either in myself or other people’s relationships, and that’s something Rachel Marks did well in her last novel, "Saturdays at Noon" as well.

I liked both Lucy and Jamie, and Marks does a great job of keeping both characters fairly level - neither is particularly a villain or a hero, both are very human at times and it’s easy to see where they’re both coming from.

The supporting cast of characters were great too, and the inclusion of their families as being affected by their break-up also felt like real life.

In the same way as that’s what makes this story enjoyable to read, it also made it somewhat bland, I’m afraid. I could see the ending coming and it made sense, nothing else would, so it wasn’t a surprise when it finally happened (or didn’t!). I did like it and am glad I read it, but it’s not a story I’ll be talking about in 6 months.

For fans of ‘Five Years Time’ and other Rachel Marks’ novels. Thanks for the DRC Netgalley and Michael Joseph, this is out to buy now!

This book starts with a break up, but you’re instantly hooked. It might be a good idea to have tissues to hand for this one as you will be feeling all the feelings. The dual points of view allowed us to really understand the characters feelings and I loved this book!

Rache Marks always delivers. Her characters are complex yet always likeable and genuine.
Jamie and Lucy love each other, but want different things. This is their story. It is a simple tale but told with sensitivity, a sense of humour and realism. It gripped me and was a very enjoyable holiday read. I recommend it.

I did enjoy this book but Lucy took some taking to I didn't really like her to start and couldn't decide if she had been written that way or if its just the way it happened, it is a rollercoaster of emotions and you will need some tissues