Review: How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang

 19/01/2026 | Hong Kong

One of the resolutions that I took this year was to read more books, preferably fiction, and stay away from doom-scrolling as much as possible. Now when it comes to fiction, I am inclined towards novels that are  either directly romcoms or have a hint of romance in them (then again what is life without a few romantic escapades here and there). After almost a semester of slaving away at university, I had almost given up on reading good novels, watching K-dramas and Bollywood. The only creative thing which kept me going was listening to music. It's not that I didn't search for light-hearted textbooks in the uni library, but it was only recently that I learnt that the library gives kindles on loan and I could, therefore, get my hands on one of them. And like all the great decisions that were made in the past, I also took the great (or was it?) decision on one random afternoon to read "How to End a Love Story" by Yulin Kuang. 

Now before y'all come for me saying I'm n months behind Booktok's current obsessions, let me excuse myself saying my uni curriculum is incredibly demanding. 

My first impression of the book: Unpopular opinion or not, I like books where they give the background information of the characters in the first few chapters. I definitely do not like reading through half the book without knowing why the female protagonist hates the poor guy who is nothing but sweet to her (was that a spoiler?) So thankful Yulin decided to straightforward mention the funeral of the female protagonist's sister. No matter how big of a fan you are of suspense building, I still like when the background info is given without delay and I can continue with the process of character development in my mind. In my opinion, the base for the plotline was very well built. 

Further: Reading through the book, I could really go inside the characters. I felt what the characters felt, and I would like to give the credit to the author for being so descriptive even about the slightest of advancements in the plot. For instance, I admired the part where Helen, the female protagonist, could understand that she was hating on Grant, the male protagonist, for the wrong reasons but she couldn't stop because one, he was indirectly the reason she no longer had a sister and two, she had conditioned herself for years to hate Grant no matter how sweet he is to her. Now, elaborating on the first reason, I understand that it was not Grant's fault that Helen's sister was in the accident, it was her choice to jump in front of the car and (in short) take her life. But, Helen is still allowed to blame Grant, because after all it was his car, and we as humans take great pleasure in putting the blame on someone else so that we grieve less. Do you get what I mean? Grant wasn't directly at fault yes, but Helen is not wrong either to blame Grant. But yes, she should've been more sensitive towards the fact that Grant had to also live with the fact that his actions took the life of another person. But if all characters were so sensible and perfect with their actions and thoughts, then the plotline would cease to exist. 

The genre was enemies to lovers, and let's just say this book did nothing but increase my desire to fall in love in the same way. But, in my opinion the falling-in-love portion of this book was a bit too rushed. One moment they were arguing and the next moment they were hooking up (is this what they mean by "the line between hate and love is very thin"?). Sure, they had a "we-cannot-fall-in-love" phase, but that was really short-lived. Sure, the guy had a yearning stage after they decided to break things off, but it just didn't hit as hard. The plotline was also very "Americanised" (if you know what I mean), which meant hooking up with random people and making sexual jokes is common in the storyline. 

Lastly, I would like to say it was a good start to my this year's reading resolution. It was a light-hearted romcom with a slight tinge of past trauma and forbidden-lovers trope (her parents were disapproving for a really long time, but then again she's asian, they would be disapproving even without the past trauma, he's a scriptwriter not a doctor or lawyer, not the perfect chinese son-in-law). Good for a short-read I would say, maybe something you would like to read on the way to work.
Let me know what you think of the novel if you've also read it.

Tairn