Cecelia Ahern and I have History.

Well, strictly speaking I have history with Cecelia Ahern and she has no idea who I am, but I’ve felt a connection for many, many years now, and I need to tell you about it.

It started when I was 24, on honeymoon, and picked up PS I Love You as one of the books to read by the pool. This being a thousand years ago, and social media not really being a thing, I had no idea what it was about beyond lots of people recommending it.

So picture me, if you will, happy on my sunlounger, starting this book about a young married couple. What larks! Just like us! Except - hold on. He what? And she’s reading what now?!!

I sobbed. I sobbed by the pool and in the bar, while my brand new husband fetched me drinks and looked at my blotchy face and likely quietly wondered whether he’d made an awful mistake. “but they loved each other so muchhhhhh” 😭😭😭😭 Other holiday-makers eyed us suspiciously from adjacent tables, wondering how badly wrong things could have gone in such a short space of time.

So if you’d mentioned Cecelia Ahern to me in the two decades since, and offered me a new book of hers to read, I would immediately flash back to those tear-sodden pages and I would say no. No, thank you, not for me.

That was until I picked up Into the Storm. I felt that nearly 20 years was long enough to have recovered some equilibrium. We’re all older and wiser now. Despite the intervening ups and downs, like any marriage, I still get to wake up next to that same husband every morning. Surely we could brave me trying another Cecelia Ahern offering?

Turns out while I grew up a lot in the time since PS I Love You, so did Cecelia, and in turn so did her characters. This time she brings us Enya, an Irish GP in her mid 40s, whose life is upended after she comes across an accident on a rainy December night.

As Enya’s marriage falls apart, so too does her professional life and many other of her relationships. She escapes (some would say runs away) to a rural practice while she tries to deal with what happened that night. But something - or someone - is following her, and Enya has to reckon with repercussions and fear.

The book does a great job of conveying the claustrophobia of paranoia and fear. From the weather, to Enya’s surroundings, via the lack of privacy in small-town life, Ahern builds up layer after layer of the darkness she’s mired in. There’s just enough levity, though, and sun breaking through, that the book avoids misery. Supporting characters are well drawn and provide excellent foils to Enya’s unravelling.

In fact, very few of the characters are especially likeable - which is kind of the point; but it takes real skill and a steady hand to write a book that explores the worst aspects of life, and exposes some of our deepest fears, and yet to not have your readers broken by the end of it. Just as well Ahern’s so good at her job, eh?

Into the Storm is 20 years away from PS I Love You, in many ways. If you like unflinching examination of the darker sides of human experience and nature wrapped up in a very readable story, get this ordered.