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A review by stephxsu
If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane
4.0
If you’ve ever talked books with me, you’ll know that I don’t believe that a book needs a shiny new concept in order to be good. It’s how familiar tropes are executed. And I am happy to say that a fake dating plot (combined with makeover!) at the hands of a master such as Mhairi McFarlane delivered. IF I NEVER MET YOU was heart-warming, comforting, and hopeful, and the perfect palate cleanser for me at the end of a month of intense reads.
This book, like all of Mhairi’s, worked for me despite its familiar plot because of how real the characters felt. The way in which they initially present in the story turns out to just be the top layer of a multifaceted onion. Mhairi’s characters, like my favorite human beings, are the product of a million childhood experiences, poor decisions, post-traumatic stress response thinking, and more. Even random side characters feel like they could really exist somewhere in the world, no matter if they are despicable or supportive. I love that. I love thinking that someone like Mhairi depicts her world and all the characters in it because that world actually exists somewhere, for her.
As always, I think that Mhairi’s books are done a disservice by being marketed as romances. Even though IF I NEVER MET YOU is, at its heart, a romance, because it focuses on development of Laurie and Jamie’s characters, both Laurie and Jamie also evolve separately and wholly from the things they learn along this journey. This makes the romantic payoff so much greater for me, because the characters support one another to develop into their full potential thanks to meeting one another, not have development thrust upon them by a whirlwind of limerent hormones.
If I have any qualms about IF I NEVER MET YOU, it may be in the undeveloped potential of Laurie being half-black. To some extent, I understand why and appreciate that Mhairi made Laurie half-black, for her book worlds are super white otherwise, and why can’t POC be the main characters in romances, in stories in which their POC-ness isn’t the main plotline? However, despite a very few, very realistic moments with microaggressions and discrimination, this angle was for the large part unexplored in the book. Office politics were presented only from the perspective of Laurie being treated in certain ways because she is a woman, not necessarily because she is a woman of color. Laurie’s struggles with self-esteem are written as if she doesn’t have additional things to overcome from a lifetime of being Othered by her countrymen. I would love to see more POC and their unique struggles and perspectives in Mhairi’s stories.
The degree to which I love each Mhairi McFarlane book depends on how much I can relate to the FMC and their growth journey. I’m not sure if IF I NEVER MET YOU will crack my top three, but I had a great time reading it anyway.
This book, like all of Mhairi’s, worked for me despite its familiar plot because of how real the characters felt. The way in which they initially present in the story turns out to just be the top layer of a multifaceted onion. Mhairi’s characters, like my favorite human beings, are the product of a million childhood experiences, poor decisions, post-traumatic stress response thinking, and more. Even random side characters feel like they could really exist somewhere in the world, no matter if they are despicable or supportive. I love that. I love thinking that someone like Mhairi depicts her world and all the characters in it because that world actually exists somewhere, for her.
As always, I think that Mhairi’s books are done a disservice by being marketed as romances. Even though IF I NEVER MET YOU is, at its heart, a romance, because it focuses on development of Laurie and Jamie’s characters, both Laurie and Jamie also evolve separately and wholly from the things they learn along this journey. This makes the romantic payoff so much greater for me, because the characters support one another to develop into their full potential thanks to meeting one another, not have development thrust upon them by a whirlwind of limerent hormones.
If I have any qualms about IF I NEVER MET YOU, it may be in the undeveloped potential of Laurie being half-black. To some extent, I understand why and appreciate that Mhairi made Laurie half-black, for her book worlds are super white otherwise, and why can’t POC be the main characters in romances, in stories in which their POC-ness isn’t the main plotline? However, despite a very few, very realistic moments with microaggressions and discrimination, this angle was for the large part unexplored in the book. Office politics were presented only from the perspective of Laurie being treated in certain ways because she is a woman, not necessarily because she is a woman of color. Laurie’s struggles with self-esteem are written as if she doesn’t have additional things to overcome from a lifetime of being Othered by her countrymen. I would love to see more POC and their unique struggles and perspectives in Mhairi’s stories.
The degree to which I love each Mhairi McFarlane book depends on how much I can relate to the FMC and their growth journey. I’m not sure if IF I NEVER MET YOU will crack my top three, but I had a great time reading it anyway.