Love Me or Leave Me

by Claudia Carroll

A captivating romantic comedy that will tug on your heart-strings. The characters feel like friends and you won't want it to end! 'Welcome to the Hope Street Hotel - where you check in married, and check out single.' Two years ago Chloe Townsend was dumped at the altar and had to leave behind everything that mattered to her. Even now she's finding it hard to move forward. That is until she lands an incredible job, running a brand new boutique hotel. Suddenly she's starting to put her life back together, and, apart from the fact that her hard-to-please new boss is breathing down her neck, things are looking good. But what goes on in the Hope Street Hotel is a far cry from anything she's ever dealt with before. This is a pioneering 'divorce hotel' designed to make every aspect of breaking up efficient and pain-free. In one single weekend, Chloe's team promises to take care of everything - legal, technical, emotional - and guests check out carefree and single. No one is better qualified than Chloe to understand what couples need when their relationship is at breaking point, but she soon finds herself having to tackle the heartbreak she's tried to bury.
In particular three couples need her help - Jo and Dave, Lucy and Andrew, and Kirk and Dawn - and the opening weekend is full of revelation, trouble, memories happy and sad, facts that need facing, and some very big surprises. It's time to move on. And it soon becomes clear that some endings are, in fact, very exciting new beginnings ...

• ISBN10: 0007520875
• ISBN13: 9780007520879
• Publish Date: 22 May 2014
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 18 February 2016
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: AVON, a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

Claudia Carroll has long been an author who I have enjoyed to read. And it seems like it's been ages since her last release, the rather fantastic Me & You. So I've been on tenterhooks all year for her newest release Love Me Or Leave Me. It's been out in Ireland since April, but is only just releasing in the UK in October (I don't know why, I'm afraid). I loved the idea of the novel - a hotel where you arrive married, and leave divorced; I've never heard of something like that before and it was super interesting and I was very keen to see how Claudia wrote it, how she made it work and if it would be something I would enjoy.

Right off the bat, let me say that this is not a bad book, but for me I just didn't love it. I liked it good enough, but it didn't blow me away, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I did Me & You. But the premise is fascinating, absolutely fascinating - I just expected it to be done a bit differently. I thought it would focus on the hundreds of couples who would move through Hope Street Hotel's doors, and instead it focuses on just three or four. All of them have reasons for being there, but it takes literally forever for us to be made privy to them. I absolutely hate that, in books. Why keep the suspense up? It's not a suspense novel. Just tell us and get it over with - it's like ripping off a band-aid. Dawn was always alluding to some big, massive thing that made her leave Kirk, but it takes her so long to actually spill the beans that I just didn't care. I like immediate gratification.

I didn't really care for the couples who went to Hope Street Hotel - except Lucy and Andrew. The rest were far too highly strung and I just felt I didn't know them enough to care about them. I did, however, care about Chloe, who was the only characters whose narrative was first person. I liked her so much (although I wish she doubted herself less) and I loved getting to know her, and felt sad reading about what she went through (which thankfully we learn right at the very beginning - there's no teasing on that front). I liked her tentative exchanges with her boss, Rob and it was super nice to see a woman in charge of a hotel, and Chloe did it with charm and warmth, and lots and lots of enthusiasm.

So while I didn't exactly fall head over heels for Love Me Or Leave Me, it was surprisingly warm and fuzzy, considering it dealt with divorce and it was hardly a bad read at all. I do really enjoy Claudia's books, I think she's a fantastic storyteller and her plots are always spot-on and interesting, I just didn't fall in love with Love Me Or Leave Me, which was a shame. I'm excited to see what she does next, and I hope the concept is even half as good as this one was, because it was great. I just wished I had loved it more, but it is what it is sometimes....