What I’m Reading: P.S. I Still Love You

Posted on 5 June 2015

Today we take a look inside Jo’s bag, which along with the usual purse and keys, usually contains a small princess figurine or two and some dusty raisins. She blames her girls but we aren’t convinced. Jo heads up our digital marketing at Scholastic, making sure that our website, emails and social media make it as easy as possible for parents, teachers and children to find the best new books.

I guess it goes with the territory for anyone who works in publishing, but I have always been a voracious reader. Any genre, any author, I always had a book on the go. That was until I had children.

Suddenly I found that the book I’d started whilst pregnant was still sitting half read on my bedside table and my baby was now well into the second half of her first year. Of course, I had managed to read endless mum blogs and every book going which promised the answer to uninterrupted sleep. It was disappointing enough that these books failed to provide the answer, but more disappointing was not having had the time, or indeed energy, to make more than a few pages progress in a proper, escapist work of fiction. And boy did I miss that.

But then I returned to work, and oh my word, the bliss of a 30 minute train ride…ALONE. Yes I may be crammed in a carriage and paying through the nose for it, but I am free of a buggy and bags and the needs of small infants, and I have a book! A BOOK! And for that 30 minutes I resist the temptation to check my Instagram and emails and Facebook and Twitter, and instead I plough headfirst into whatever delight lies within the pages of my current read. Heaven.

Which brings me to my current reads, the wonderfully talented Jenny Han and her Lara Jean books – To all the Boys I’ve Loved Before and P.S. I Still Love You . These books are so beautifully written, the characters so quirky and fresh, the world they inhabit so intense with the flush of first loves and fractured friendships. And the food, the glorious, glorious food. Please let there be a spin off recipe book, because I lost count of the mouth-watering breakfasts and cookies they enjoyed.

Jenny Han’s books transported me right back to the brilliant intensity of being sixteen, the highs of the highs and the crushing lows of the lows. The realisation that everything is changing and perhaps more than anything, it is you who is changing the most; discovering who you are and finding the confidence to embrace the world which awaits you and the countless options presenting themselves. It couldn’t have been further from my day job rushing between work and two little girls and it was the most delightful of escapes. Thank you, Jenny Han!

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