The Sight of You

"I love this book. It’s definitely one that I wish I had written. It has, again, two main characters. It’s written in alternating chapters, which I liked. You’ve got some that are written by the female protagonist, Callie, and you have others that are in the voice of the male protagonist, Joel. The book opens with Joel looking out the window at night. His upstairs neighbour is about to take his little baby out on a car ride—to soothe the baby in the middle of the night because it won’t stop crying—only to find that the tyres of his car have been slashed. As the reader, you soon know the reason why the tires are slashed: Joel, our main character, has done it. He has prophetic dreams about people who he cares about, and he had a dream that, sleep-deprived, his friend and neighbour was going to have a car accident with the baby in the car. He disables the car so that can’t happen. That’s the wonderful opening premise of the book—you’re already intrigued. Rather than this being a blessing or a miraculous ability, Joel sees it as a curse. He has told nobody about it and has pretty much shut the whole world out. There are shades of his being a recluse, in almost the same way that Will Traynor is in Me Before You . It’s somebody who’s been dealt a hand by fate who can’t deal with it. Joel is determined never to fall in love with anybody because he can’t bear to have to share the burden with anyone. Inevitably, he meets Callie, who’s running a friend’s cafe at the time. Callie herself is a scarred individual. Although she is upbeat, she’s not quite as effervescent and bubbly as Lou Clark in Me Before You , but she is what he needs. Again, despite resisting the pull of romance, they fall in love. He shares with her this ability that he has, and although she’s doubtful, she believes him, and it’s all going well until he dreams about the day that she’s going to die. I won’t say any more, in case anybody hasn’t read the book. It’s one of those big questions. I read afterwards (I think in the author’s note) that that was how the book started. The premise of the book came from a dinner conversation: ‘If you could know the exact date of your death, would you want to know?’ In Holly Miller’s circle of friends, it was divided. I think the answer seems to be pretty universally divided, fifty-fifty. Some people say, ‘Absolutely, yes! I’ve got things on my bucket list I will make sure I do.’ Other people say, ‘No, never! I don’t want to know. It would ruin the time that I have left.’ It’s an interesting one to ask your own friends and family and see how they come down on it. But she’s built a love story around that idea, and a really good one as well."