Stevie‘s review of This Year’s for Me and You by Emily Bell
Contemporary Women’s Fiction published by Penguin 27 Oct 22
I enjoyed Emily Bell’s first book, also set around the festive season, when I read it last year and was looking forward to seeing the author’s style mature in subsequent novels. This one, however, feels like it might have been a previously drafted story, and not just because it’s set four years ago. I found the main characters less relatable and the jumps between their present and past a little less polished. Having said that, I liked the basic idea of the story and the descriptions, particularly those of the main locations in London, Dublin, and Suffolk were very vivid. My favourite parts of the story were definitely those that centred around the friendship between Celeste and Hannah, even though that was pretty much all told in flashbacks, as well as in conversations between Celeste and those of her friends who also knew Hannah.
Celeste, a management consultant in London, first met Hannah at an Irish summer camp, but they only really became friends six months later, when Hannah invited Celeste to her New Year’s Eve party as the 1990s became the 2000s, and both girls were preparing to move from school to university the following summer. Two aspects of this part really resonated with me: the vague paranoia around the Millennium Bug potentially causing mass computer crashes, and the breaking up and re-establishing of friends’ groups in one’s late teens. Not that the two coincided in my case, of course.
Following that first party, Celeste and Hannah spend every New Year’s Eve together, even as their other friends pair off, and not even Hannah’s newly serious relationship is going to get in the way of their tradition. Then Hannah dies in a skiing accident, and Celeste is left facing her mid-thirties alone. She stays close to Hannah’s bereaved partner and reluctantly accepts his invitation to spend New Year with the rest of their friends’ group at the country house he was planning to renovate with Hannah and is now working on alone. While there, Celeste finds herself repeatedly thrown together with Patrick, whom she has known almost as long as Hannah, although he was always peripheral to their group before Hannah died.
When Celeste comes across the list of Hannah’s New Year resolutions from the previous year, she decides that tackling all twelve of them – one for each month of the coming year – will be the perfect tribute to her dead friend. Her attempts bring her into contact with Patrick again, and he offers to take part in the challenge Celeste has set herself. The two grow closer, but the course of true love never seems to run true in fiction, and the pair find themselves at odds – and back in Dublin – when the next New Year rolls around. But fear not, this is a holiday story and there’s bound to be a happy ending.
As I implied at the start, I found Celeste and Patrick difficult to warm to, although I did like Hannah’s boyfriend, and kind of hoped he and Celeste would end up consoling each other away from all their more annoying friends. Not my favourite holiday book of the year so far, but not the worst either, in my opinion.
Grade: C
Summary:
When Celeste loses her best friend Hannah, she’ll do anything to keep her spirit alive.
So when she uncovers her friend’s old list of New Year’s resolutions, Celeste vows to complete them all.
One adventure at a time, she rediscovers how wonderful life can be.
But when one resolution leads her to someone from her past, Celeste can’t help but wonder…
Could the biggest adventure of all be falling in love?
Read an excerpt.
