Title: Favourite Hello. Hardest Goodbye.
Author: E.S. Carter
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 290 Pages
Category: Contemporary Love Story, Magical Realism
Rating: 4 Stars
At a Glance: This story is told with an abundance of emotion and a lovely prose that illustrates the need behind Macsen’s pursuit of Ellis as much as it persuades readers to understand that Macs and Ellis are, and always will be, fated to meet and fall madly, deeply in love. This isn’t a choice, it’s a compulsion, it’s a directive and an imperative empowered by something much greater than themselves and more profound than the material world. And this is where Favourite Hello. Hardest Goodbye. breaks from the traditional boundaries of the romance genre.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Ellis.
I feel him.
Before I even lay eyes on him, I sense him.
The air in the room seems charged, my awareness of him heightened, but he is a stranger to me.
Unfamiliar, yet familiar.
Unknown, yet known.
And something inside me says, “Hello, I’ve been waiting for you.”
Macsen.
I see him.
I’ve seen him a hundred times before and I know this will not be the last, but each time I do, I feel it.
That invisible tether.
I remember everything.
I remember him.
His eyes lock with mine and then move away too quickly.
I am nothing more than a stranger, another face in the crowd.
While he is my favourite hello, and my hardest goodbye.
Review: E.S. Carter’s Favourite Hello. Hardest Goodbye. gives a new spin to the second chance romance trope and redefines the meaning of forever, and does so by incorporating a magical realism into the story that’s founded in destiny and reincarnation. The beauty of this book is one that is most certainly in the eye of the beholder and whether its readers see the nature of Macsen and Ellis’s love as a romantic promise of infinite beginnings or a simple series of tragic endings. Perspective, in this case, is everything.
Macsen and Ellis are fated to meet each other time after time after time, in other lifetimes, as other people, but their souls forever recognize each other regardless of what names they answer to or how they look. There is a loosely defined amnesia angle to every reintroduction, as Macsen—or whatever his identity is at the time—is cursed to spend each of his lifetimes knowing and searching for his other half, though that man—in this case Ellis—never remembers who and what Macsen is to him, only that there is an inexplicable, irresistible, and immutable pull to a stranger when they finally meet. The concept of eyes meeting across a crowded room and the magnetic pull of attraction is given a more specific and tangible slant in Carter’s storytelling. As their bond deepens and Macsen explains to Ellis why they both feel an empty space inside that no one else can fill, not until they find each other, it sounds beyond implausible, yet Ellis eventually begins to recall the many lives they’ve spent together as well as the pain of all their goodbyes—whether they’re given a matter of months or they are given years.
This story is told with an abundance of emotion and a lovely prose that illustrates the need behind Macsen’s pursuit of Ellis as much as it persuades readers to understand that Macs and Ellis are, and always will be, fated to meet and fall madly, deeply in love. This isn’t a choice, it’s a compulsion, it’s a directive and an imperative empowered by something much greater than themselves and more profound than the material world. And this is where Favourite Hello. Hardest Goodbye. breaks from the traditional boundaries of the romance genre. Macs and Ellis are grateful for whatever time they’ve been given together in this life, while readers may feel conflicted, if not outright let down, by the author’s intpretation of Ever After. And after. And after.
I’ve never shied away from a good cry (The Song of Achilles and Thrown Off the Ice are two blubbering mess books that come to mind), but I can say that despite the way Favourite Hello. Hardest Goodbye. ends, the author never tries to trick readers into holding out hope for anything other than its outcome, so I wouldn’t categorize it as a tearjerker—at least, I didn’t think so—as much as it is a story that made me contemplate life, death, and the tenacity and resiliency of love.
You can buy Favourite Hello. Hardest Goodbye. here:
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