How to End a Love Story(111)
Thank you to anyone who ever read and reviewed my old fanfic and told me I should write a book someday. It took me a long time to get here, but I hope you find this.
Thank you to my parents, Ron Kuang and Sumei Ruan, who supported my dreams in ways big and small since I first announced at the dinner table that I wanted to be an author someday and wrote Lisa Frank fan fiction for a school assignment. I love you and am sorry for all the ways I’ve made your lives difficult over the years. If you have turned to the acknowledgments to make sure you’re in them before reading the novel, I suggest you skip chapters 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, and 35. And if you’ve read them, I don’t ever want to know. <3
My sister, Olivia Kuang—fourteen years younger and so much cooler than I ever was at your age, at every age. I love getting to watch you grow up. Thanks for being cool about this plot when I called to tell you about it.
Finally, to the authors who first entrusted me with adapting their work for the big screen: Maurene Goo and Emily Henry. I will always be grateful to have found that shard of glass reflecting back a piece of me in your beautiful writing.
About the Author
YULIN KUANG is a screenwriter and director, whose credits include the CW’s I Ship It and Hulu’s Dollface. She was once fired from a Hallmark movie for being “too hip for Hallmark” and is the adapting screenwriter of Emily Henry’s
People We Meet on Vacation, as well as the writer/director of the forthcoming Beach Read film for 20th Century Studios. She lives in Pasadena with her husband, Zack, and their orange cat, Eloise.
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Praise for How to End a Love Story
“I was hooked on the very first page of How to End a Love Story, the absurdly delicious debut from Yulin Kuang. The chemistry between Helen and Grant is pure magic, as is Yulin’s gorgeous writing. I need seven other books from her ASAP. Don’t miss this one!”
—Carley Fortune, #1 New York Times bestselling author “An utterly compelling debut complete with romance secret sauce—a couple with a real reason to stay apart . . . and simply can’t. Emotional, relatable, and binge-worthy.”
—Tessa Bailey, #1 New York Times bestselling author “Impossibly tender, funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching, How to End a Love Story is a gorgeously original romance—and so much more—that will leave you laughing, sobbing, and desperately wishing that it would never end. This is the kind of glorious gut-punch of a book that you’ll want to share with all your friends, and reread over and over. I fell in helpless love with Helen and Grant’s unforgettable story, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
—Lana Harper, New York Times bestselling author “Yulin Kuang’s How to End a Love Story is a smart, sexy, and powerful page-turner. The insider’s look at Hollywood is just as fascinating as the complicated characters who work in the writers room. I couldn’t put this book down—but also didn’t want it to end!”
—Jill Santopolo, New York Times bestselling author “Two complicated people in an impossibly complicated situation, drawn to each other in spite of a deeply complicated past: How to End a Love Story is moving, compelling, and heart-flutteringly sexy. Yulin Kuang writes with a sure-footed confidence here, with impeccable knowledge of who her characters are . . . and how to get them to their hard-won happy ending.”
—Kate Clayborn, author of Georgie, All Along
“Yulin Kuang has a wonderful voice, poignant and funny, she grabbed me from the first paragraph. I stayed up way too late reading this!”
—Jill Shalvis, New York Times bestselling author “How to End a Love Story is a sharp, sexy debut. Fans of Emily Henry and Colleen Hoover will love Yulin Kuang’s wistful second-chance romance.”
—Elissa Sussman, bestselling author of Funny You Should Ask “How to End a Love Story is everything you need in a romance novel: Complex characters, hilariously witty banter, and that spice level? Off the charts! If you need me, I’ll just be over here dousing myself with cold water. And then reading it again.”
—Colleen Oakley, USA Today bestselling author of The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise “This captivating novel is a sexy and emotional read that deals with the aftereffects of trauma in a realistic and heartrending way. Readers looking for a contemporary romance with a passionate and grand love story, characters that leap off the page, and an original storyline will relish screenwriter and director Kuang’s debut novel.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Screenwriter Kuang’s debut beautifully probes the lingering effects of grief and guilt while offering readers a glimpse behind the curtain of Hollywood glamour. . . . Kuang handles her characters’ complex emotions with sensitivity and skill, and makes the chemistry between Helen and Grant leap off the page. Readers will have no trouble rooting for these two.”
—Publishers Weekly
“For readers who like romances threaded with operatic sorrow.”
—Kirkus Reviews