"Beautifully crafted and poignant exploration of the timeless power of love"
Award winning author Jenny Valentine is justly renowned for never using three words where one will do, but every word she uses will count. Hello Now is another short novel that punches well beyond its weight. Every novel she writes is completely different, but you always know that you are in for an unforgettable reading experience. So, you would not expect the obvious wish fulfilment fantasy love story of finding true happiness with the perfect time-travelling love object and while that is the bare bones of the story of Jude and Novo, what we get is so much more. Jude is cleverly non gendered throughout the book and so this romance can take on multiple interpretations. The mechanics of Novo’s existence are never logically explained either, but we do have an intense dive into the powerful emotion that often seems beyond rationality and beyond time. It is only when Novo meets Henry, the old reclusive sitting tenant in the house Jude has just moved into, that Jude realises the harsh dilemma facing them. In one of the most touching scenes, Henry and Novo recognise each other for what they are. As Henry later explains to Jude alone, if Novo stays with Jude in her present time, he sentences himself to eternal loneliness once Jude inevitably dies, the same loneliness that Henry currently endures. A sacrifice that Novo is desperate to make but one that Jude cannot live with. Doing what is right is not always easy but embracing the moment, embracing change, and moving forward after loss are lessons worth learning. Exquisitely done and a thought provoking, rewarding read.
| Primary Genre | Young Adult Fiction |
A beautifully moving, exquisite and utterly original love story from Carnegie-shortlisted author Jenny Valentine - for 12+ girls, boys, and everything in between.
This is more than one story, more than one Now. But I'll tell it as best I can. Me? I'm Jude - like the Patron Saint of lost causes. Him? He's Novo. Like nothing on earth. Literally. In the beginning, before Novo showed up, my mum and me moved to the seaside. Then the first of July, 11.34am. Novo arrived. I was like an atom in his orbit. Alone with him, feeling the pull. Suddenly in the moment, in the Now. Then a terrible, unthinkable Now. One that could tear my family apart. But Nows can be undone, rewritten, changed. Goodbye to life as I know it. And Hello Now...
From Guardian-prize-winning author Jenny Valentine, this is a stunningly written exploration of what it means to live and love in the moment that quite literally transcends logic and time.
A message from Jenny Valentine; ‘This is a book about falling in love, but there’s no soft landing. I didn’t want to be part of the hard sell. I tried to take the feeling apart and have a proper look at it, like a mechanic. I tried very hard to be unromantic, to stop it hurtling onward for once, and pin it down.
I wanted to be unflinching.
No together forever. No happy ever after.
I don’t think love is easy. It’s not organised or obedient or even kind. Love is a shock and it isn’t good for you. Not always. It can be messy. And painful. It can bite like a steel trap.
And at the same time, we can’t get enough of it. That fall is pure magic. An illusion. Astonishing. A dream. Love is a kind of madness. And we are, all of us, a bit in love with love.’
Hello Now features in the following genres: Young Adult Fiction, Children’s, Teenage and Educational
Hello Now is available in Paperback, Hardback, Ebook
Hello Now was written by Jenny Valentine and published by HarperCollins an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Hello Now has 191 pages
