Brooke's Pick: Out of Love by Hazel Hayes

After a five-year relationship, a couple goes their separate ways. What follows is a peeling-an-onion deconstruction of their relationship which gradually reveals the story of their time together back to their very first meeting.

Hazel Hayes' debut novel, Out of Love, is therapy. Cleverly chronicling a love story backwards, from end to start, Out of Love provides a unique perspective of a flailing relationship. Most couples can tell you how they fell IN love, but not everyone has the insight to understand why they fell OUT of love. Hayes gives readers the opportunity to be the proverbial fly on the wall, peeking in on this couple as they call it quits, and following them in retrograde through time, observing all of the seemingly innocuous instances that eventually lead to a break-up. Incredibly insightful and thought-provoking, Out of Love is for anyone who has ever stood amidst the rubble of a hopeless relationship wondering how on Earth they got there.

While Out of Love's reverse storytelling won't be for everyone, I personally loved it and thought that the use of this tactic in terms of a break-up was brilliant. Here we see a couple at their worst - at the end of a relationship after both have hurt each other in such an inexplicable manner that the only choice they have left is to go their separate ways. We get to know them as two former parts of a whole. We understand that their relationship did not work out. What we do not know is who and how they were before everything fell down around them. Who they were IN love.

By traveling backwards through time, Hayes feeds us little clues about their relationship, showcasing both the good and the bad. We see the ups and the downs, the highs and the lows, the first kiss and the last. We get to see where the cracks in this couple's foundation began before it turned into an earth-shattering chasm. And we also can't help but fall in love with them and their relationship, wishing that it all could have worked out, but reading with the keen awareness that we know that it won't in the end.

Out of Love is for all of the reflective and pensive readers out there, especially those who have ever had to say goodbye to someone they once loved more than life itself. Hayes writes relationships so well, capturing all of the emotions and thoughts that women have when their relationship isn't working out. I especially appreciated Hayes' insight into her protagonist's past, and her exploration of how one's upbringing can affect them throughout the rest of their life and especially in relationships. I found myself nodding along to much of Out of Love's unnamed female lead's thoughts and feelings, and found this book to be extremely affirming and resounding.

To anyone who loves to analyze relationships or for those who have experienced heartbreak themselves and wondered "why," Out of Love is for you.

Availability: Book
Rating: ***** Stars (I loved it)
Reviewer: Brooke, Public Relations Librarian

ARE YOU AND THIS BOOK A GOOD MATCH?
DISCOVER MORE WITH NOVELIST APPEALS!
Out of Love

GENRE: Literary Fiction; Love Stories
THEME: Love on the Rocks (The course of love doesn't run smooth in these books, where romantic relationships flounder, struggle, and unravel. ); Unnamed Narrator (Known by false identities, aliases, titles, or simply no name at all, these narrators keep you guessing as to who they are, and whether it matters.)
TONE: Bittersweet; Moving
STORYLINE: Character-Driven; Unconventional
WRITING STYLE: Stylistically Complex
CHARACTER: Flawed; Likeable
LOCATION: London, England
SUBJECT: Adult Child Emotional Abuse Victims; Breaking Up; Irish in England; Moving to a New Country; Separated Couples; Thirties; Women