How to Walk Away: A Novel

Audiobook review!!!

• Single POV • Medical Romance • Recovery after accident • A broody Scottish MMC • Slow burn • Cute sister relationship rekindled • Emotional

“It’s the trying that heals you. That’s all you have to do. Just try.”

This book will forever be a comfort read for me! I've lost count on how many times I've read it. With pure Katherine magic, she delivered one heck of an emotionally beautiful read!!

Margaret's life changed in a flash. And not in a way she ever expected. One minute, her boyfriend is proposing to her in a plane, and then the next thing she knows, she's being pulled out unable to feel the lower half of her body. Living just became a whole lot different for her.

The audio for this book is perfect. Im usually not the biggest fan of single narrator audiobooks! But Thérèse Plummer put on one heck of a performance!!! Not only did she nail the female FMC's emotions, but her Scottish voice for the MMC is unreal!! It's perfect. Not once did it even seem like a single POV book. She had me completely hooked!

I don't feel like this book gets the hype that it deserves for how freaken fantastic it is! I'll continue to recommend it as one of my favorite books!

"Because that’s all we can do: carry the sorrow when we have to, and absolutely savor the joy when we can. Life is always, always both."

Do you have an author that you say is a favorite author, but then you realize you haven’t read all their books? That is me with the exquisite Katherine Center. You must have read all of their books to be called a favorite, right? What if their backlist isn’t that good?? #1 this year I’m doing something about it and #2 I have found that here is no need to worry about the quality of her past books.

As a part of #backlistbooks24, I chose to read How to Walk Away by Katherine Center, which was written back in 2018. It is divine. It is deep. It can be dark. It is funny. It is touching. It is perfect. I went into it so incredibly blind, like pitch black, and I was SHOCKED at where we went in this book. It is not a light rom-com but even if those are what you lean towards (like me), you won’t care. It is a beautiful book.

I hesitate to give any hints. I did not read the summary, blurbs, or reviews and I really liked it that way. I will only say, pick this book up to join Margaret Rosemary Jacobson on a JOURNEY.

At the end there is a short story read by Katherine Center that feels like a bonus. Both this book and the bonus are linked to Things You Save in a Fire. I already read that book and I can confirm that reading them in either order is fine, although you may as well do it in the “correct” order, IMO.

Thérèse Plummer is a superstar narrator and I’m so thrilled to be seeing more of her, recently in Love, Theoretically and Bride. I recommend How to Walk Away on audio because Plummer is fantastic, but you have to also get it in kindle because there will be so many quotes you will want to highlight and keep forever.

5/5 stars Closed door 11 hours 28 minutes on audio Locations: Austin, Texas and Brugge, Belgium

Am I the only one who adds books to my list and then I re-read the blurb and think, ok, that's going to be a lot of emotions and I just don't really have the time for that nonsense and where is my smutty smut? I'll read 100 pages and give it an hour of my life and then I can say I tried and move on, like some kind of blackmail or negotiation?

So anyway...

I finished it.

It WAS emotional and horrifying and beautiful and sad and happy and hopeful and heartbreaking and healing and so many other things. And the punny title...and Ian...and Kit...and the relatable mother. The horrible and weak Chip. Mean Myles. The epilogue gave us a glimpse into an entirely different world and was a perfect wrap up.

How to Walk Away is the fictional story of a woman’s journey of recovery after a tragic accident changes her life completely.

This was the second book I have read by this author and I did enjoy it, though I must say I liked The Bodyguard better.

It was interesting to read a novel written in this particular setting and I could tell that the author did her research and consulted with medical professionals who helped inform her timeline and descriptions of things. I appreciated that, as it made the story feel more realistic than some novels I have read in the past. She did a great job creating an interesting story within a more limited group of settings than many novels have.

Seeing the characters each go through their own journeys of healing was also interesting. There are likeable characters here, despicable characters, and characters you want to root for. The narrative never became boring to me and the ending was satisfying.

I routinely take a star off of my ratings for the presence of language in a book (particularly if it is strong language, as it is just not my thing), so do note that without that, my rating would have been 4 stars of 5.