Book Review: How to Walk Away

How to Walk Away

by: Katherine Center

Publication Date: May 15, 2018
Date Finished: May 2, 2018
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

I won an advanced reader's copy of How to Walk Away by Katherine Center from a bookish first raffle.  The copy was provided from the publisher, St. Martin's Press.  All opinions expressed below are my own.

Synopsis:
Without giving too much away, How to Walk Away tells the story of Margaret Jacobsen.  Margaret is set to have the best day of her life - she just knows that her boyfriend is going to propose. She has recently graduated from business school and has an amazing job lined up.  Oh, and she has a new house that she recently bought!  Basically, things are looking glorious for Margaret....but of course, that doesn't make for an interesting story, right?!  After a terrible accident, how will Margaret pick up the pieces of her life and cope with her new version of normal?

Review:
I really enjoyed How to Walk Away.  Now, if you follow along with my reviews, you may know that I have difficulty enjoying books with totally unrealistic plots.  Don't get me wrong - I love fantasy and science fiction, but when a book is written as if its totally plausible but its IMPOSSIBLE, I find myself getting annoyed.  So, when characters have unbelievably good luck in horrific situations (think Castle of Water and One True Loves), I find it hard to move past this.  Instead I ruminate on how this is NOT POSSIBLE.  Why am I talking about this now?   If you read past chapter 1, you will learn that How to Walk Away has a big plot twist early on that could have ended up turning into one of those impossible, eye-rolling, situations...but I'm happy to say that it didn't!  Instead, the author, Katherine Center, used this to show how the characters (and people in general) cope in the most dire of situations.  What I enjoyed about How to Walk Away was that nothing was sugar coated and too unrealistic.

From the start, I liked that Margaret was a strong character.  While this was a romantic read, Margaret is already an independent woman at the start of the novel.  She has graduated from business school.  She has purchased a home.  She has an amazing job lined up.  She doesn't NEED the romance, but its a nice perk for her as a person.  Yes, things change for her after the accident, but I enjoyed that Margaret was written as a character who didn't need saving, but rather could save herself.

Now, I know that this is romance.  And we want romantic and gorgeous characters, but Ian was a bit too romanticized for my tastes.  What was hard for me was that he was just too perfect.  Give him a horrible haircut or make him a little chubby or SOMETHING to make him more realistic in my eyes.

My final verdict: I am a big fan of How to Walk Away!  I will definitely be checking out more by Katherine Center as I've been totally on board with romantic reads lately.  The plot was NOT too cheesy, the characters felt real, and there are some great lessons thrown in.  I'd recommend packing this one in your summer beach bag!