Mad About You is my first experience with Mhiari McFarlane. Photographer Harriet Hatley gets to confront some painful past experiences, learns not to settle for less than she deserves and kicks her past in the ass. A wedding photographer who doesn’t want to get married, she’s seen everything that could go wrong on the big day. When her boyfriend proposes, she can no longer pretend they are a good fit, and her eyes open to how bad they are together.
The beginning of the book was awful. The blurb references Harriet calling off her engagement to “the perfect man,” so I knew the first part was something I just need to get through. It was so cringe and uncomfortable. I found it so rough because it was so relatable. I’ve had conversations like that with ex-partners and experienced disbelief and delusions.
Cal is too on the nose for me. Not only is he gorgeous, but he’s also intelligent, financially stable, and emotionally available. The relationship between Cal and Harriet is more of a subplot, which I found surprising. I loved that for Harriet, but I had difficulty connecting with Cal.
To me, this book reads like a post-breakup idealized fantasy. One I’ve definitely had. I still keep in contact with some former ex’s now ex-girlfriends. We didn’t get the grand exposé, dramatic denouement or absolute vindication, but that’s why this is fiction. As I read Mad About You, I was cheering for these women and hoping everything would work out okay. I kept waiting for it to go south, which kept the tension high.
Mad About You has a romance, but I’d place it in the contemporary literature category rather than romance. It’s a cute story of survival and overcoming abuse, and it’s all tied up with a neat bow at the end.