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Read an exclusive extract from When You Read This by Mary Adkins

Read an extract from When You Read This
– the sparkling and heartfelt debut from Mary Adkins, out on the 7th of February.

Iris Massey is gone.
But she’s left something behind.

For four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping clients perfect their brands.

But Iris has died, taken by terminal illness at only thirty-three.


Adrift without his friend and colleague, Smith is surprised to discover that in her last six months, Iris created a blog filled with sharp and often funny musings on the end of a life not quite fulfilled. She also made one final request: for Smith to get her posts published as a book. With the help of his charmingly eager, if overbearingly forthright, new intern Carl, Smith tackles the task of fulfilling Iris’s last wish.

Before he can do so, though, he must get the approval of Iris’s big sister Jade, an haute cuisine chef who’s been knocked sideways by her loss. Each carrying their own baggage, Smith and Jade end up on a collision course with their own unresolved pasts and with each other.

Funny and moving in equal measures, When You Read This is a sparkling debut about love, life, and all the emails you really wish you’d never sent.

Read an extract here.

When You Read This is out on the 7th February. Pre-order it now: