PS, I Love You

 (285 customer reviews)

Cecilia Ahern makes a splash with "PS, I Love You," a surprisingly charming debut about grief, love, family and struggling to move on with life. While Ahern needs to polish up her writing, she has plenty of raw talent, and a good grasp on her quirky characters.Holly and Gerry were the perfect couple. Not sickening perfect, but perfect for one another. And so when Gerry dies of a brain tumor, Holly feels utterly lost and depressed, staying in her apartment and deteriorating. Finally she emerges from her cocoon, but still isn't ready to reembrace life. Despite the efforts of her family and friends, she can't move on.Then she receives a package from beyond the grave: the List. Gerry wrote it before his death, leaving her instructions to do things like buy a bedside lamp, sing karaoke, and ends every note with "PS, I love you." Holly obeys the List -- sometimes happily, sometimes reluctantly -- and her new experiences help her to remember the past, while looking...Read more

Holly and Gerry were the perfect married couple from day one. Always happy, always smiling, and always there for one another. The kind of couple that others envy. But at the age of thirty, Gerry is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, and soon passes away. Holly is heartbroken. However, months after Gerry's death, Holly receives a package of letters that Gerry left for her before his death, letters instructing her to perform various different tasks that will keep his memory alive. Now, with the help of her closest girlfriends, and a family who drives her crazy, Holly is embarking on a new life that's even greater than the one she was forced to leave in the dust.

There are those books that leave you feeling sad upon completion, and those that leave you with a happy feeling. Cecelia Ahern's P.S. I LOVE YOU is a book that leaves you feeling a mix of both. Her characters are very in-depth, and dimensional, and show various sides of their personalities throughout the...Read more

I kept trying to finish this book, because the story seemed cute. However, it is very hard to read while rolling your eyes every third word. This book is unintentionally funny many times when it uses trite or literal wording. For example, "Holly explained the story about the woman in the salon and they both rolled around laughing." Good lord. Throughout the entire part that I did read, all I could think of was my junior high teacher saying "Show, don't tell" - I think Cecelia Ahern must have been absent the day that concept was taught in school.

Other reviewers commented on how her dad is Ireland's prime minister. I may be wrong, but I think he wrote a fawning review on this site. Somehow, that made the book even more pathetic to me.

I wish I could give the book two stars because her intention was to tell a good story, but I just can't get over the awful writing. Maybe she will have worked on that with her next book, Rosie Dunne - but I am not going to spend the...Read more