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  • Published: 1 April 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099468592
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $25.00

I Think I Love You




From the no. 1 bestselling author of I Don't Know How She Does It: a witty and poignant story about a young girl who falls hopelessly in love with a teenage pin-up and some twenty years later, with her life in pieces all around her, finally gets to meet him.

1974. Thirteen-year-old Petra and her best friend Sharon are desperate to win a competition to meet their teen idol.

Meanwhile Bill is unhappy in his job, ghostwriting the fanzine of the man so adored by the girls - and slightly unnerved by the extreme emotions of some of the fans.

Fast forward to 1998. Petra is pushing forty and on the brink of divorce. While cleaning out her mother's wardrobe she finds a letter declaring her the winner of the competition she and Sharon had agonised over decades ago.

So, twenty-four years after entering the competition the girls claim their prize and are flown out for an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas to meet their hero at last. Bill, now the magazine's publisher, flies out with them...

Poignant, hilarious, joyful, profoundly moving and uplifting, I Think I Love You captures what we learn about love, life and friendship through the universal experience of worshipping a teen dream. It will resonate with readers everywhere.

  • Published: 1 April 2011
  • ISBN: 9780099468592
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $25.00

About the author

Allison Pearson

Allison Pearson was born in South Wales. An award-winning journalist, she was named Newcomer of the Year at the British Book Awards for her first novel, I Don't Know How She Does It. Allison has written for many magazines and newspapers including the Independent on Sunday, Observer, the Sunday Times and the London Evening Standard. She is a contributing editor to Harper's Bazaar and, for four years, she was the popular Wednesday columnist of the Daily Mail. Allison is now a staff writer at the Daily Telegraph. She lives with her family in Cambridge.

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Praise for I Think I Love You

Allison Pearson is one of the stars of her generation

Evening Standard

If you had forgotten what it's like to be fourteen - or, indeed, are the parent of somebody who is - this is a novel not to be missed

Daily Mail

Pearson's knack for observing the ups and downs of ordinary folk (and all our faults and foibles) is pitch-perfect and as funny as it is poignant

Glamour

Hilarious and beautiful...Funny, insightful, wonderful

Easy Living

Anyone who can make me laugh and cry in equal measure gets my vote

Grazia

Better written than anything by Nick Hornby ... this book is about big things - friendship, motherhood, love, loss - seen through the prism of smoke from a joss stick, set to jingly jangly music that still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, produces a shiver not unlike that from a Fox's glacier mint, and makes me almost, but not quite, want to wet my pants

Evening Standard

It's a finely tuned and satisfying plot and the writing is flawless and funny ... But it is the book's subtle and profound examination of its central themes that really makes it shine

Chloe Rhodes, Daily Telegraph

I Think I Love You is a precisely observed account of the obsessions of early adolescence, doing for the pop crush what Nick Hornby has done for football and vinyl

Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times

Pearson (is) a natural comic writer

Claire Allfree, Metro

If you had forgotten what it's like to be 14 - or, indeed, are the parent of somebody who is - this is a novel not to be missed

Katherine Whitbourn, Daily Mail

Funny yet poignant story of obsession and first love

Good Housekeeping

Anyone who can make me laugh and cry in equal measure gets my vote

Fiona McIntosh, Grazia

A satisfying celebration of love lost and found

Spectator

A wry satire on girlish obsession

Sally Cousins, Daily Telegraph

The hugely affecting tale of a teen crush and its consequences decades later, this is a subtle and flawlessly written love story

Daily Telegraph

Pearson's nostalgic narrative clearly marries the pangs of adolescence to mid-life regret. A pitch-perfect portrait of the teenage self.

Independent

Funny and poignant, it will also remind you why you'd never want to be 13 again!

Prima