This British romantic comedy about Delia Moss is a simple and an easy read, with short chapters and an engaging style. Delia has been living with her boyfriend Paul for ten years, and she is ready to make it official, so she proposes to him. She doesn’t get the response she was hoping for, however, and she needs to rethink her life.  So she goes from Newcastle to stay with her best friend Emma in London. Emma has had a different path in life, with a high powered job but no steady boyfriend.  The two women have a lot of fun together. Delia finds a job in public relations for a rather suspect Australian who seems too ready to lie and create bogus information to help his clients, and Delia has to decide how much she is willing to compromise her principles. Then she meets Adam, who tries to blackmail her to betray her boss, and she is thrown into greater confusion. She has to work out whether or not to trust Adam, and they have many stormy interactions. Eventually though, romance between them flickers.  At the same time, her old boyfriend Paul is trying to woo her back, and so she is faced with a difficult choice.

It’s not Me, It’s You is a fun novel that does well at portraying a time of change and crisis in a person’s life when they have to evaluate who they are and what they want out of life. Delia’s choice between Paul and Adam is a hard one because she has a long history with Paul, and although he has lied to her, he is making genuine efforts to explain himself and be open with her. Adam is new and exciting, but is also much more on an unknown quantity. So Delia has to decide what kinds of risks she wants to take about her future.

© 2015 Christian Perring

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York