London With Love written by Sarra Manning published by Hodder and Stoughton

 

 

London. Nine million people. Two hundred and seventy tube stations. Every day, thousands of chance encounters, first dates, goodbyes and happy ever afters.

And for twenty years it's been where one man and one woman can never get their timing right.

Jennifer and Nick meet as teenagers and over the next two decades, they fall in and out of love with each other. Sometimes they start kissing. Sometimes they're just friends. Sometimes they stop speaking, but they always find their way back to each other.

But after all this time, are they destined to be together or have they finally reached the end of the line?

This is a story told over twenty years, starting on 9^th September 1986 in North London, and over the course of the book, it brings us right up to the current day – including Covid.

It’s primarily a trip that you take with the two main characters Nick and Jen from their first encounter at college right through the ups and downs of their platonic friendship.

I absolutely loved this story, and think its mainly because I’m of a similar age to Jen and although my 80s music of choice was more Nik Kershaw than The Smiths (I wasn’t cool enough!) the soundtrack, the fashion and the makeup all took me back to when I was a teenager longing to be bought Iron Maiden lipstick from Miss Selfridge! That wasn’t the only difference, I was very much a Saff London girl from Lewisham (just up the road from New Cross where Kirsty lived!) and poor old Jen almost broke out in hives when she had to travel cross the Thames from North London to my manor!!!

You know when you get to a certain age, and you meet up with school friends for dinner and drinks and collectively take a trip down memory lane, but there’s always someone in the group who remembers a story that you had completely forgotten about? This book is exactly that!!! You are quickly drawn in, and feel like Nick and Jen are real friends, and you’re all exchanging stories over a glass or two of Pinot, whereas back in the 80s in those sweaty basement clubs where condensation would have been dripping off the ceiling, we would have been drinking Snake Bites!!!

I can’t fault this book at all – if you lived through the 80s you’ll absolutely adore it, and if you didn’t you’ll also love it, because you won’t believe the hairstyles, the clothes and the fact that even “back in our day” we too suffered with teenage angst!!!!