I originally posted this review in February because I was so excited to share this novel with you. Here is a reposting. How to Walk Away is available tomorrow!

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How to Walk Away

Katherine Center

St. Martin’s Press

May 15, 2018

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From the author of Happiness for Beginners comes an unforgettable love story about finding joy even in the darkest of circumstances.

Margaret Jacobsen has a bright future ahead of her: a fiancé she adores, her dream job, and the promise of a picture-perfect life just around the corner. Then, suddenly, on what should have been one of the happiest days of her life, everything she worked for is taken away in one tumultuous moment.

In the hospital and forced to face the possibility that nothing will ever be the same again, Margaret must figure out how to move forward on her own terms while facing long-held family secrets, devastating heartbreak, and the idea that love might find her in the last place she would ever expect.

How to Walk Away is Katherine Center at her very best: an utterly charming, hopeful, and romantic novel that will capture reader’s hearts with every page.

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SASCHA DARLINGTON’S REVIEW

Have you ever read a book where you couldn’t turn the pages quickly enough to get to the end and then when you did, you thought–I’m going to have to read it over again, just because?

To me, How to Walk Away embodies practically everything I would want in a book: reality, charm, tears, humor, tolerance, forgiveness, fairytale, love, and most of all, heart. For I could feel the heart of this novel pumping throughout every word on every page.

Margaret seems to have everything. She’s about to start an extraordinary job and she’s been in love with her boyfriend for seemingly forever and feels certain he’s about to propose. The day that is the happiest day of her life also becomes the worst day of her life. Her world, with all of its golden expectations, falls apart.

While I could compare How to Walk Away to Me Before You, I won’t because the similarities are superficial. At their hearts they are two different books because How to Walk Away shimmers with constant hope and resonates with joy.

[…]you have to live the life you have. You have to find inspiration in the struggle, and pull joy out of the hardship.

Amazingly I felt myself smiling a great deal as I read. Margaret suffers ups and downs and yet rebounds, finding humor or making humor. She’s snarky, but lovable. And, as a garrulous-type when faced with the tight-lipped seemingly humorless Scottish physical therapist, Ian, she cajoles, teases, and surprises until she can rouse a smile. Oh, I loved these two!

The other main characters, Margaret’s estranged sister, Kitty, her former Marine father, and her headache of a mother, are all groomed with a loving hand. Even the mother who seems to be from some distant planet draws closer so that we understand where she is coming from and why she is the way she is.

Even now, just a few days after having read it, I feel such love for this book and want to read it again and savor it and its hopeful philosophy.

I won a copy from the publisher in exchange from an honest review.

To order, click on the cover:

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rating: 5+ out of 5 butterflies

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