Books: "You Belong With Me" By Mhairi McFarlane

 

You Belong With Me 

By Mhairi McFarlane

Avon; paperback, 352 pages; 18.99; available today, Tuesday, September 3rd

Mhairi McFarlane is a Sunday Times bestselling author who hails from Scotland, and her unique name is pronounced Vah-Ree. She started her career in journalism, but found her calling writing fiction. Her first book, You Has Me At Hello, was an instant success, and she has now written ten novels. Her work straddles the line between being a romantic comedy, which has a humorous voice and a strong romantic hook at its core, and a women's fiction novel about complex relationships, self-discovery, friendship, family drama, coping with trauma and loss, and learning to love oneself. Her novels have earned Best of the Year recognition by Amazon, OprahMag, Insider, Cosmo, and BookPage.

You Belong With Me is McFarlane's new novel, and this follow-up to Who's That Girl is a charming, hilarious, and heartfelt story about a woman who has to adjust to life in the spotlight when she starts a relationship with a famous actor.

Edie Thompson is an ordinary citizen with tomato soup stains on her coat who the handsome, charming Elliot Owen, Hollywood royalty, insists he has fallen in love with. This will certainly be complicated, but they're just too good together not to try.

The third person in their relationship is, naturally, the press, which Edie doesn't take long to discover is not easy. There are stories that abound which can lead you to mistrust the motives of those around you. There also is an ocean between them, and gorgeous co-stars and charismatic new colleagues are closer by. It is also harder when your past is raked over by envious people determined to destroy where you're at now.

Edie already known how it feels to be infamous, and now she is getting a taste of what it means to be famous. Are she and Elliot a fairytale, or a cautionary tale about getting what you wish for?

In this excerpt, McFarlane writes of Edie's reaction to "The One" arriving at her door on Christmas Day: "'It's someone for you.

Edie frowned after Meg spoke. She took off the oven glove and placed it next to the pigs in blankets, crossing the room and weaving past her grinning, flushed sibling. Meg reflexively removed her paper hat as if a hearse rather than her elder sister was passing.

Edie knew exactly who was at the door, and yet she still didn't know, both at the same time. Perfect certainty and the precariousness of hope.

The Christmas Day cook's cava had her bumping along merrily as it was; now she face-planted down a log flume of it.

The caller at the end of the hall came into focus, his face partially obscured by a large, brown-paper-wrapped bunch of white roses. Fireworks went off inside Edie.

'Are roses kind of 'cheating husband' cheesy? I don't speak fluent 'flower,'' Elliot Owen said, lowering the roses and offering them to her.

He somehow looked better than she remembered.

He was in a grey winter coat, with a turned-up collar, that whispered at least a little grand, possibly even two. His dark hair had been unusually short for a role but has now grown out a little and starting to curl.

Edie accepted the roses with a small exclamation of gratitude, momentarily unable to respond. 

'You're not pissed off I've crashed your Christmas Day?' Elliot said, an anxious look she knew well crossing his face.

'No...I'm merely stunned at seeing you,' Edie said, inclining her head toward the flowers. 'Thank you. Cheating husband.'

'I haven't, obviously,' Elliot said.

A few beats of creaky silence followed as the remark landed heavily: first the idea of marriage and then the notion that he could somehow cheat on her in their current circumstances.

Edie had absolutely no idea what to say, so they were left looking at each other with a you go first intensity and longing. She was glad she'd declined the 'Santa's Chimney Legs' deeply boppers.

'I didn't come round only to be a flashy s**thouse with a bouquet,' Elliot said eventually.

'I was going to say - I'm pretty sure delivery isn't that much extra if you'd wanted to pay for it,' Edie said, trying to emulate a level of savvy-comeback composure she didn't feel.

She was incredibly touched and excited that he was here. She also didn't think microdosing Elliot Owen was ever going to work, so she had the roller-coaster sickness.

Call her a pessimist, but an inner voice was already scoffing: yeah, lovely, he wants to call in and see you on Christmas Day, but imagine the emptiness next year when he doesn't. When he can't. When you know why he won't.

This was precisely why she'd ended it. She wasn't going to perform the emotional equivalent of barefoot free-climbing the Burj Khalifa to prove it couldn't he done and confirm that falling the distance would break her. What they'd had was too perfect and good to end that way. She foresaw inevitable outcomes.

And yet, he was here. And suddenly nothing else mattered. 

Elliot cleared his throat. 'I wanted to say...'

Edie glanced over her shoulder as there was a scuffle behind them and a ceremonious closing of the dining room door - as if a festive table full of people who'd been trying to listen in to catch the mood of the interaction had decided they probably shouldn't."