Review: A Song of You and Me by Mike Gayle

 Helen and Ben parted as heartbroken 18-year-olds and went their very separate ways.

Twenty years later, mother-of-two-teenagers Helen is still in Manchester, a part-time primary teacher, stunned by the behaviour of her love-rat husband. In an old T shirt and scruffy jeans, she feels at the lowest point in her life.

And suddenly, impossibly, Ben is standing on her doorstep. Tired maybe, lonely even, but clearly still the world-famous, LA-based multi-millionaire rockstar he has become.

Can you ever go back?

For Helen and Ben, so much has happened in the years between. But just to sit in the kitchen for a while and talk - that would be nice.

Before the world comes crashing in.

Review: This is easily one of my top ten books of the year-I loved it. If you liked Daisy Jones and the Six or if you are a fan of Paige Toon’s Johnny Jefferson books, then you will absolutely love this one! I was hooked into Ben and Helen’s story from the start. I loved meeting Helen. She is trying her absolute best to be there for her kids and do the right thing by them. Like a lot of parents with children who are about to go off to university though, she is struggling with her own sense of identity. She has a fabulous best friend and a mum who help to build her up and amplify her voice but she has an ex-husband who is trying to undo all of the good work that she has done.

Then we have Ben. Ben is a celebrity, and it is always fun to read about celebrities in novels. I think they must be so much fun to write because you can make them have the most extravagant life style and do the most unthinkable things and Ben really does seem to have it all-on the surface. Underneath all of that, Ben is just like you and me and is struggling just as much with his sense of identity as Helen is. I love the idea that he is attempting to come back to his roots in this book in a sense but only subconsciously, consciously he has made a decision to try and escape it all and I think that was incredibly brave of him.

This book deals with the celebrity lifestyle, yes, but it also covers issues that you and I face in our everyday lives and, most importantly, it deals with mental health in men, a bit of a buzz topic right now but something that still isn’t talked about as openly as it should be. I love the way Mike Gayle writes characters of all genders, but I’m always interested to read his male characters and hear certain love stories from their point of view. I couldn’t put this book down. It made me laugh, it made me cry and it will definitely stay with me for a long time-highly recommend!

To order your copy now just click here!