Hazel Hayes

A genre-bending story about love and loss, hope and heartbreak, and the healing to be found in life’s little limbos, those in-between spaces where you’re no longer who you were and not yet the person you will be   Following a breakup, Kate and Finn decide to keep sharing their house until the lease runs out in twelve weeks, alternating week by week so that they are occupying the same space but never at the same time. Practically, the plan makes sense, but coming back each Sunday to a home where Finn has been feels far too much like living with a ghost. Soon Kate finds herself adrift in her own subconscious, trapped in the liminal space between loving someone and letting go.

A novel for anyone who has loved and lost, and lived to tell the tale. As a young woman boxes up her ex-boyfriend’s belongings and prepares to see him one last time, she wonders where it all went wrong, and whether it was ever right to begin with. Burdened with a broken heart, she asks herself the age-old question . . . is love really worth it? Out of Love is a bittersweet romance told in reverse. Beginning at the end of a relationship, each chapter takes us further back in time, weaving together an already unravelled tapestry, from tragic break-up to magical first kiss. In this dazzling debut Hazel Hayes performs a post-mortem on love, tenderly but unapologetically exploring every angle, from the heights of joy to the depths of grief, and all the madness and mundanity in between. This is a modern story with the heart of a classic: truthful, tragic and ultimately full of hope.