Soulmates

by Holly Bourne

[Leah]

As soon as I spotted the rather stunning looking Soulmates on Amazon, I knew I had to buy it. The cover is probably my favourite book cover of 2013, yet it’s such a simple design! A black cover, with a neon-like heart and Soulmates written in script in the middle. Simple, but really, really effective. It really does jump out at you and I pre-ordered it, knowing it was a book I desperately wanted to read. I was so excited for it to arrive, and I couldn’t wait to delve in, as I love stories that take a different view to the word “soulmates”.

I’d probably say I do believe in soulmates. I do believe there’s one person out there who’s absolutely perfect fot you. But I do also believe the theory that you can love more than one person. But the theory that finding your soulmate could mean people being hurt? Well that’s a new one for me! But I was interested to see how Poppy and Noah’s relationship would play out, to find ont just why their relationship was such an awful occurrence. It was super fascinating. It helped that as well as the novel being narrated from Poppy’s perspective, which was amazing, we were also allowed glimpses into the people, Anita and Rain, keeping track of Noah and Poppy, offering third-person glimpses into them. If I had only one complaint, it’s that I’d have liked more from Anita and Rain, because I found their lives to be so fascinating and I had a lot of questions – about the work they were doing, about what happened to Anita to make her how she was, and I found Rain to be intriguing because he never seemed entirely comfortable with the whole thing. It’s like there was a whole other strand there that wasn’t explored, which was a shame.

While I liked the concept of Soulmates, and felt it was mostly well delivered, I did find myself confused by Poppy. She was quite abrasive, quite cynic, quite hard to like and for most of the novel that stayed true. I found it so hard to warm to her, because she was just too sarcastic and cynical. She never really had anything nice to say, and that was a shame because I wanted to like her, and I wanted to see what Noah saw, which I didn’t. She did soften a bit when she and Noah were together, but I still couldn’t really warm for her. I also wanted more from their romance, from their love story. There were times Noah and Poppy acted so grown up – they were 17, for Christ sake, I wanted them to ACT 17. Despite the fact they didn’t know the trouble they were causing, they seemed so serious for young kids who should have been falling in love. It should have been sweet, and romantic, but it was super serious, and super cliched and soppy. They were in love after a few days, I do believe you can fall in love at first sight, but I wasn’t convinced from Poppy and Noah…

I did like Soulmates, it was clever, Holly Bourne is clearly quite a talented writer, but there were bits I didn’t enjoy. The romance should have been more fun – I cannot believe two 17 year olds would go to the ballet in London, where’s the trips to the cinema? A theme park? But the ballet? Flipping heck. I’m 23 and ballet isn’t something I think I’d ever go to. It’s like they were adults before they’d even had a chance to be youngsters. I also didn’t like the ending. I knew how it would end, before I’d even started; it’s inevitably how a novel like that could end, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wanted it to be different. I live for my endings, and this one just left me with quite a few questions. It was good, absolutely good, and brave, but y’know just now what I wanted because I know what I want. I very much look forward to Bourne’s second novel, because I enjoyed Soulmates, it was very clever.