Smart, funny, and deeply heartfelt, I Know How This Ends by Holly Smale is a story about friendship, heartbreak, and the surprising ways we find our way back to ourselves.
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- Category : Contemporary Romance
- Publisher : Century
- Publication date : 14 Aug. 2025
- Language : English
- Print length : 416 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1529195950
- ISBN-13 : 978-1529195958
If you could see your future, how would you live now?
Margot Wayward is in manically gleeful self-destruct mode. Following the implosion of a ten-year relationship, she’s wilfully derailing her successful career, joyfully taking down men on dating apps, and living in total chaos.
Until one day, when Margot has a vision of herself with a man she’s never met before. She doesn’t believe in fate. But when Margot meets single-dad Henry, the vision comes true: exactly as she’d foreseen it.
As her future continues to reveal itself, a glimpse at a time, Margot realises she knows exactly what’s going to happen, and when. And there’s nothing she can do to change any of it.
So Margot has to decide how to live, how to love again, and how to be herself… Because if you can’t change your destiny, how on earth do you live your present?
I Know How This Ends Review
What a fabulous start! We first meet Margot on a date with “Gemini John” from a dating app, and I loved how she worked out the ‘real’ details of his life and the clever way she did it. Straightaway I knew this wasn’t going to be your typical love story.
Margot is lost when we first meet her. Heartbreak has hollowed her out and she no longer knows who she is. Anger is what keeps her going, and she’s set herself a target — to gather data from dates. But then the visions begin: short flashes that last only seconds but reveal something vital about her future. From that point on, I was hooked.
As the story unfolds, we learn more about Margot’s ten-year relationship with Aaron and the truth behind what really happened between them. Alongside this, I adored the bond she shares with her friends Eve and Jules. Their friendship is the backbone of the story. We don’t get to see much of Lily (the fourth absent friend in the friendship group) but she’s an important character, and when the pieces fit together later, I completely understood why Jules acted as she did.
The characters are wonderful — I fell in love with Henry and Winnie, and Margot’s relationship with her grandad warmed my heart. It’s very special for many reasons.
Margot herself is an absolute star of a lead. Her sense of humour is wickedly sharp — I found myself belly-laughing at times (OMG, so funny in places!) — but there are also genuinely moving moments that brought a lump to my throat. Her role as a meteorologist is such a brilliant concept too, and I really felt for her when things went wrong. The weather analogies and similes scattered throughout are perfect and I felt, a brilliant addition to the storytelling.
The whole premise is fascinating: if Margot can see glimpses of her future, how should she respond? Should she trust them? Could she misread them? Would her choices change the outcome? These questions kept me turning the pages, and with the story’s brilliant pacing, I found it hard to put the book down.
I Know How This Ends is smart, funny, heartfelt, and full of warmth. Margot is a heroine you can’t help but root for, and Holly Smale balances humour, heartbreak, and hope in a way that feels so fresh and original.
About the Author
Holly Smale is the internationally bestselling, award-winning author of the Geek Girl and The Valentines teen series, which have sold 3.4 million copies worldwide.
After a lifetime of not quite fitting in, Holly was diagnosed as autistic at the age of 39. Suddenly a lot of things made sense. Holly regularly shares, debates and celebrates neurodiversity on Twitter and Instagram @holsmale.
