Where Rainbows End (Cecelia Ahern)****

It’s probably not Cecelia Ahern’s fault I consider her a hit-and-miss author. Probably anyone who tried to turn such magical ideas as she has into a book would struggle because almost every one of her ideas is outside the realms of possibility (not including the one about invisible friends, If You Could See Me Now. Trust me, they are real).

Where Rainbows End is slightly more grounded in reality than most but it also includes the ‘magic’ of two people’s being soulmates. Ahern’s central characters Rosie and Alex (Alex is a guy) are meant for each other but they kind of keep missing each other. They arrange to go to the school Prom together despite the small inconvenience of Alex’s living in the USA at the time but Alex’s flight is cancelled and the only guy without a date is so awful Rosie has to get drunk. And she ends up having a baby. Then Rosie realises she likes Alex but Alex goes off and gets married. Then Alex realises he likes Rosie but she goes off and gets married. Then Alex… you get the idea. I don’t know why they do it really. Surely marriage is bad enough if you actually love the person you’re marrying.

Rainbows End, like the Holly’s Inbox books, is a novel in letters. It starts off with Alex and Rosie aged 7 writing each other notes in class (or from their bedrooms on the many occasions when they’ve been banned from seeing one another). They later graduate to Instant Messaging each other in class (which is a bit surprising, I’m ten years younger than them and I’m sure we never had Instant Messaging in class, I didn’t even know how to do Instant Messaging till I was twenty) before mostly e-mailing when they’re adults. Alex moves to America when he and Rosie are in their late teens, which ensures they have good reason to continue writing to one another.

The novel in letters can be alienating because you never find out anything until someone writes about it in a letter or e-mail. You don’t know anything until it’s happened, which kind of rules out the idea of them dying tragically in each other’s arms. In this case, we barely see the two main characters together because they’re mostly writing to each other (although they do get to meet up every so often, where they take turns at making fools of themselves).

But in this book, it isn’t a problem. If you think about it, all books (apart from the present tense ones I suppose) involve reporting events. Many books are written in the first person – just like letters and e-mails. Also, the letters and e-mails in this book tend to be quite long, so in some ways it’s not much different from a multi-viewpoint book, with several pages from one person’s point of view, followed by several pages from the point of view of another person. Most of the book is Rosie and Alex, but Rosie’s daughter Katie, Katie’s best friend Toby, Rosie’s new friend Ruby, Rosie’s sister Steph and their parents all make regular appearances.

And the Instant Messages are so much like conversations, they flow naturally too. True, as far as Instant Messages go, they’re not terribly realistic. Ahern uses a bit of poetic licence, allowing the characters to interrupt each other mid-sentence. As far as I know, Instant Messages aren’t that advanced yet – I don’t think you can see what the other person is writing until you’ve pressed Send, so while someone might only read the first sentence before writing back, they can’t really interrupt you mid-sentence. But Ahern gets away with it. And if there isn’t an Instant Messaging system like that now, there probably will be at some point. And maybe this book is set in the future.