HOW TO END A LOVE STORY is author Yulin Kuang's debut title. It is a love story with the most impossible-looking situation and doesn't really fit into a particular trope. I'd say it's close to enemies to lovers because that's how it works out at least technically. It is a complex situation with a trigger warning of suicide and anger, which happens right at the beginning of the story, so keep that in mind.
I'd like to say that after the most impossible of starts, once the dust settles and time does its healing to an extent job, HOW TO END A LOVE STORY is a slow burn, open door, sizzling chemistry kind of story. It has a little bit of everything. We follow Helen Zhang and Grant Shepard, residents of a small New Jersey town who attend the same high school. They know of each other, Helen being a nerd and Grant being a football jock.
Their paths cross when they are both in high school, about to graduate and go off to college. The first time they come across each other is when tragedy strikes the Zhang family and Grant is involved in it. They both graduate and move on with anger, bitterness and regret in their hearts. They both become writers. Helen in New York is a traditionally published YA author of a popular series. Grant is a screenwriter on the road to success and big times in Hollywood. Their path cross again when Helen's YA series is signed up for a TV series and she has to be in LA to work with the team. That's when she comes face to face with Grant, believing she'd hate him for what's happened in the past and somehow get through the next few months.
This time around Helen instead of feeling all the suppressed anger and hate, also feels attracted to Grant. The feeling is mutual and over time they give in to their attraction. While initially, it's to get them out of their system, as time goes by they fall for each other. Helen being Helen, stubborn and duty-bound eldest daughter warns him they simply cannot happen outside their bedroom. In a complicated last few chapters with a lot of emotional back and forth, they write their own ending and defy what was expected of them.
What I enjoyed and what I did not enjoy -
The fact that technically these two people shouldn't have gotten together but they did.
How Helen resolves the angst she kept hold of against her sibling. She processes it all without really leaning on anyone. She stands up for herself and ensures she wants Grant only for herself and is not giving up on him because everyone expects her to.
What I would have liked to see though was an honest, heart-to-heart between Grant and Helen's parents and all 4 of them, addressing the elephant in the room; which doesn't really happen.
HOW TO END A LOVE STORY, is a story that develops gradually, things get complicated, there's introspection and resolving of said issues to move on and walk off in the sunset together.
The brilliant contemporary romance novel debut from Yulin Kuang, the acclaimed screenwriter of Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation and director of the forthcoming Beach Read feature film.
Helen Zhang hasn’t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever.
Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She’s even scored a coveted spot in the writers’ room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome and overcome her writer’s block, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except…
Grant has done everything in his power to move on from the past, including building a life across the country. And while the panic attacks have never quite gone away, he’s well liked around town as a screenwriter. He knows he shouldn’t have taken the job on Helen’s show, but it will open doors to developing his own projects that he just can’t pass up.
Grant’s exactly as Helen remembers him—charming, funny, popular, and lovable in ways that she’s never been. And Helen’s exactly as Grant remembers too—brilliant, beautiful, closed off. But working together is messy, and electrifying, and Helen’s parents, who have never forgiven Grant, have no idea he’s in the picture at all.
When secrets come to light, they must reckon with the fact that theirs was never meant to be any kind of love story. And yet… the key to making peace with their past—and themselves—might just lie in holding on to each other in the present.
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