Title: How Do I Tell You?
Author: Nicola May
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Rating: ★★★★☆
Source: Rachel’s Rare Resources
Blurb: Thirty-five-year-old Victoria Sharpe has a decent job as an illustrator, a perfectly good if predictable relationship, and great friends. So why can’t she shake the feeling that something is missing?
Keen to let off steam, she sets off on a night out with her best friends. Next morning – one reckless decision later – she resolves to make some seriously overdue changes to achieve the fulfilment she craves.
Then she gets devastating news that shatters everything she ever wanted for her future.
Or so she thinks. Because as friends and family rally around to support her, and an unexpected new romance causes her heart to skip a beat, Victoria discovers that sometimes in the deepest darkness the brightest light can shine through. But, after all she’s been through, can she let it in?

Review: Wowzers, what a story. This is easily one of the best books I’ve read, though I would class it more as women’s fiction than romance due to the issues it deals with.
It’s not an easy read. Vic has an alcoholic mother, an absent father, and a brother who gambles. She’s in a relationship, but they both cheat. Her with devastating consequences – the guy she has a one-nighter with recently had sex with a HIV positive woman, though he does not know this when he sleeps with Vic. He wears a condom but it splits… and the both end up with the disease.
May writes a story that is gentle on the heroine but still no-holes-barred. The characters talk like actual people, swearing included, with the result that they come to life on the page. It’s honest, raw, heart-breaking and uplifting. And it tackles a very thorny subject with kindness and realism, without being preachy. Even if “it’s not a death sentence any more” was said once too often.
Vic doesn’t really get any of the pushback I suspect still happens to people diagnosed with HIV. I’m 51 and lived through the “AIDS epidemic”. I remember the riots with police wearing gloves. Princess Di attempting to reduce the stigma. How AIDS exacerbated the awful moral panic surrounding gay men in particular. On one hand, I was glad not to read this – I’ve avoided watching It’s A Sin for the same reason – but I suppose it would have been more realistic.
We do have Orla behaving pretty badly, though. As one of Vic’s friends, this hits harder than ignorance from a stranger might. And Vic’s boyfriend does walk out on her, although he comes crawling back. What I did love was her family’s reaction to the news – her mum going sober and her brother settling down. Contracting HIV isn’t just a wake-up call for Vic to stop coasting through life.
In the end (and despite a missing paragraph that threw me) How Do I Tell You? is an incredible story that highlights the rarely-talked about taboo of women with HIV. And despite that subject matter, one that remains uplifting and life-affirming.
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