Lauren Connolly’s PS: I Hate You (Berkley Romance 2024) is absolutely stinking adorable. It reminded me a little bit of Abby Jimenez’s Just for the Summer, especially as it related to the mental health aspects and the general goofy smile reading the novel left on my face, and I loved it. Long story short – it’s the story of a sister traveling cross country with her dead brother’s best friend (and the man who’d broken her 19-year-old heart) to spread her brother’s ashes in the eight locations he’d provided in his final wishes. He’d insisted they do it together, so as much as Maddie hates the idea, she knows Dom will insist on following the rules. She’s stuck with him for eight states, but with each state will come another letter from her brother, allowing her to hold on to him for just a little longer.
Dom had loved her brother to, something Maddie realizes the more time they spend together. She realizes her’s isn’t a singular loss and that maybe her brother had thrown them together to honor his final wishes for a reason. Maybe he was playing matchmaker?
Despite the years and heartbreak between the pair, there’s still quite a bit of sexual tension betwixt the two. This where the book gets a little weird; I’m no prude but the word choices in the sex scenes are, let’s just say, interesting.
In addition to heartbreak and sexual tension and the grief of losing her brother to cancer, Maddie’s dealing with a lot of childhood trauma in the form of her mother, a social media influencer who consistently uses her children, and her son’s cancer and death, as a means for “engagement” with her followers. Parts of the novel are extremely heavy, but there is a humanness in the dark humor that defines Maddie (and her brother), and this novel has some pretty funny parts. (And I may have cried over the tattoo scene.)
It’s a charming read.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 