I read this because of the hype and the tears. I wanted tears. Yes, it's true, sometimes I just want to read a book that makes me feel like putty. And it almost got me. Almost. I could hear my tear ducts whirr into action at one point... they just didn't follow through. I suppose that's what I could also say about the book in summary. It didn't wow me, or woe me or make me wonder. Although the story is charming and original-ish, the chick-lit dialogue (inner and outer) just put me off from start (I almost abandoned the book several times but kept going for the promise of sobbing on the horizon). It's not that I hate this book, or think the seven gazillion people who love it are wrong for doing so, it just proved a point to me that I really don't like chick-lit or these kind of girl-meets-boy romances when there is so much telling rather than showing. It also frustrated me that some of the more tender scenes in the book actually revealed some lovely turns of phrase, suggesting that Ms Moyes could write much more subtle and sensual language but the genre/publishers perhaps censored this in favour of cliched, unnatural conversation and unnecessarily long back stories and repetitive over-explaining. All that said, I did plough through it quickly, so that's why it gets three rather than two stars.