The Best ThingThat Never Happened To Me by Laura Tait and Jimmy Rice

The blurb:

Everyone remembers their first love.

Holly certainly remembers Alex. But she decided ten years ago that love wasn't about mix tapes and seizing the moment - though she's not exactly sure it's about secret dates with your boss, either.

But what if the feelings never really went away?

Alex wants to make every moment of his new job count. It's a fresh start in a big city, and he's almost certain that moving to London has nothing to do with Holly. Almost.

How do you know if it was meant to be. or never meant to happen at all?

A brilliantly funny, feel-good story of first love, second chances and everything inbetween, perfect for fans of romantic comedies like Love Actually, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones.

My review:

Thank you to Random House UK, Transworld for providing a review copy in return for an honest review.

The Best Thing That Never Happened To Me is the fantastic story of Holly and Alex. They grew up together and we quickly establish that during these years they both harboured secret crushes on each other. The book is written both in the present, and the past, and alternates between Holly and Alex's viewpoints. The book is cleverly written by 2 authors, 1 male and 1 female. I am guessing that they took on one role each, and am intrigued to know more about how they wrote it so cleverly, and whether my assumption that they wrote in their own gender is correct.

It would be fair to say that I fell a little bit (ok, a lot) in love with Holly and Alex very quickly. If I could have waved a magic wand and teleported them back to earlier years to get them together I would have done in a heartbeat! It certainly took me back to my younger years of secret and unrequited love. This raised many smiles and happy memories.

As we alternate between 1999 and 2010 I felt able to build up a real picture of what had happened to them over the years and felt quite sad that, due to cross wires they had never admitted their true feelings for eachother.

We get to meet Richard, who is Holly's love interest, and boss. I wanted to boo and hiss him whenever he appeared, a bit like a panto baddie. We also meet Melissa, who works in the same company as Holly, who is also not very nice. The other main supporting character we meet is Kev, Alex's best mate. He is the real surprise of the book for me.

I found the style of writing both witty, moving and very heartwarming. I would never have guessed that the book was written by 2 authors which shows just how good they are. I stayed up late into the night to finish the book as it just became more and more compelling as it developed. I really want to tell you more about the storyline but it would be wrong to ruin it all for you.

I would highly recommend getting this book. It is engrossing escapism at its best. Loved it. The only downside was because I read it on Kindle I didn't get to admire the beautiful cover of the book, which is absolutely lovely.