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So of course I have a mild passing interest in the career of David Nicholls, who I am going to call a romcom novelist, and it's mainly because he and I almost have the same name, except I joke that the Nichollses with two ls are an inferior knock off in the same way I would joke that the Nicholses with one l were inferior knockoffs if I had two. I am sure I have told you the story about hearing two women in Dymocks talking about David Nicholls' new book in exactly the week my new book was getting massive publicity and they couldn't remember the book's name and I at very least was about to tell them the name of my book, and to if not actually a la the Marshall McLuhan scene in Annie Hall but BETTER reveal that I was actually author of said book, until something else one of them said made me appreciate, for the first time in my life, that there was a romcom novelist called David Nicholls. If I had made a fool of myself then, I don't quite know how my life would have gone, but I might have moved to another country and, yes, changed my name but as it happened I stayed mute, and I was soon very grateful that I had.

Anyway what's this? Well, I was going to ignore it but a friend sent me a picture of the front cover and a crack of some sort about it (don't quite remember what, but obviously it was a 'hey, this guy has a name similar to yours' kind of crack) and since I was going to see said friend in a few weeks, and I had a few audible credits (to the extent that Audible were sending me those fucked up emails saying I was going to lose 'em if I didn't use 'em) so I thought I may as well support my brother in near namedom and also I could at least say 'yes I tried reading that but...' but as it happened I ultimately listened to the whole thing (I had read him before, btw). 

It is Mills and Boon, and that's OK, because Mills and Boon had a formula (still do, I guess) and used it very well for a very long time, ultimately in the service of millions if not billions of readers. It's the same extremely satisfying formula, tweaked, that we get in soap operas or I suppose superhero movies. Or just most movies, altogether. It's where a bunch of tropes follow a recognisable pattern - maybe with a slightly, but never seriously, subversive element in the mix - and we know all along it's going to land us in the right place feeling affirmed, if not about our own lives exactly, at least about our worldview and sense of what is and isn't right.

On top of this, DN is a good writer, with a good sense of humour and he doesn't mind nodding to a subtext or two (the most knowing one here is towards the end with discussion of volcanoes about to blow - not presaging a sex scene btw, but I won't spoil). Someone in the book - I suppose it's the heroine, Marnie, is described as 'widely read in the proper sense', which is of course to say she's literarily omnivorous, the signpost I suppose being to the reader that it's OK to read fluff (?) like You Are Here but make sure you put a little bit of bran in your diet (and not just Sally Rooney either). Which doesn't mean his readers are going to actually do that, but at the same time, it's nice of him to let them feel they might. 

I assume, because he more or less says so, that his account of a trek across one of the skinner bits of north England is based on his own hiking experience. I don't know enough about that part of the world (or even about hiking) to really get a strong sense of it, but I don't really need to. The characters are always saying the right things (or the wrong things in the right places for a solid story) and Marnie in particular is most of the time possessor/sharer of the best lines of all. Hats off to DN for that creation. 

So, in sum, I am not going to be sly or patronising about it (or at least no more than I already have been) - it's an enjoyable read, from a skilled author. I don't know what else you could want.