How to End a Love Story: A Brilliant New Voice Delivers a Heartstrings-Pulling Love Story
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK!
“Emotional, relatable and binge-worthy." –Tessa Bailey
“I’ll read anything she writes. An absolute star." –Emily Henry
“I was hooked on the very first page. Don't miss this one!" — Carley Fortune
Two writers with a complicated history end up working on the same TV show... Can they write themselves a new ending? A sexy and emotional enemies-to-lovers romance guaranteed to pull on your heartstrings and give you a book hangover from brilliant new voice Yulin Kuang
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Entertainment Weekly · Today.com · Paste · Daily Waffle ·The Nerd Daily and more!
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, known for his sharp comedic banter. 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 this workplace romance 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… in this angsty and emotional slow burn second chance romance, 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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✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *How to End a Love Story* by Yulin Kuang is a poignant romance exploring trauma, grief, and healing with cultural depth and vivid characte...
Helen Zhang is a bestselling author whose work is being turned into television show, and the one person she hoped never to see again - Grant Shepard - is going to be joining her in the writing room. It's just 20 weeks and then Helen will move back to New York and they'll never have to see each other again. Easy.
However, Helen soon learns a writer's room is nothing like the quiet writing she's used to, it's loud, crowded, and spending all that time together means everyone is going to know everything about each other. Not ideal for trying to pretend someone doesn't exist. To make it worse, Grant is being nice, trying to help her settle into this new routine, but Helen has hated him for the last 13 years and that's never going to change. But as the weeks march on, secrets come to light and Helen and Grant are forced to face the events of that past that have tied them together ever since that fateful day.
Definitely one of my favorite romances so far this year!
A lot of childhood trauma on both ends, generational trauma and the dynamic between parents and their children.
Helen and Grant's characters and how they just continued to be in each other's lives was written so beautifully. One act, one decision from her sister changed the trajectory of both of their lives. Grant has to live with the fact that he was "responsible" for killing Helen's sister and Helen has to live with the fact that her little sister was battling to so many demons that she decided to take her own life. Having them work together and fall for each other was written beautifully.
Helen's need to never disappoint, upset or fail her parents had me so emotional. It's hard to be the oldest child, then being the oldest child left after your sibling took their life, the parents just went through life not living, they had the worst thing happen to them and that was very hard to read. The way they coped with her death, how they were in denial that she could have done anything like that was heart breaking. Helen's need to protect her sister, even though she didn't feel like she was gone yet, was something only a big sister can understand. The need to protect.
Grant living with the knowledge that he ended someone's life, not on purpose yet it still casted a very heavy burden on him.
Grant and Helen's story, their shared pain (differently but the same circumstance) was like watching 2 puzzle pieces finally finding each other and completing the entire picture. Through their shared trauma, they were still drawn to each other and needed the other to succeed, find peace and finally find and feel the love they were both lacking. It's a story of healing from the worst tragedy. This was a great story.
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