This review is written with thanks to the publisher for my copy of You Are Here via Netgalley.

Blurb:

Sometimes you need to get lost to find your way.

Marnie is stuck.
Stuck working alone in her London flat, stuck battling the long afternoons and a life that often feels like it’s passing her by.

Michael is coming undone.
Reeling from his wife’s departure, increasingly reclusive, taking himself on long, solitary walks across the moors and fells.

When a persistent mutual friend and some very English weather conspire to bring them together, Marnie and Michael suddenly find themselves alone on the most epic of walks and on the precipice of a new friendship.

But can they survive the journey?

A new love story by beloved bestseller David Nicholls, You Are Here is a novel of first encounters, second chances and finding the way home.

Review:

I’ve read a few of David Nicholls’ novels before and I’ve always been stunned by his ability to get to the heart of his characters and their relationships, capturing their emotions and way of life, indeed their essence, with the vocabulary he uses. It’s very rare that I see myself reflected in fiction, but Marnie could be me, and so I was rooting for her all the way through.

The structure of You Are Here is very cleverly done, taking us on a coast to coast walk with Marnie and Michael across the North of England. Although David Nicholls admits that not all the locations in the novel exist, many of them do, and are indeed recognisable. I loved the descriptions of the landscape and they really pulled me into the journey and the story that went with it.

You Are Here is not as fast paced as novels I would normally read; the time and care taken to build the characters so well does mean that the plot moves quite slowly. However, for the most part, this wasn’t an issue for me as I was so invested in the lives of the characters and this compelled me to discover what would happen next.

You Are Here is available from Amazon.