When single parent, thirty-nine-year-old Solène Marchand accompanies her young daughter and a few friends to see their favourite pop group, August Moon, in Las Vegas, including a meet and greet with the band, the last thing she expected was to catch the eye of one of the members, nineteen years her junior and for a secret love affair to begin.

At first, the young and dashing English Hayes Campbell just wants to take Solène out for lunch, but it isn’t long before the pair are meeting up in secret across the world. Hiding their ‘meetings’ from friends and family the only people who know about them are Haye’s bandmates, their girlfriends, and staff.

But as time goes on is this just a simple fling, two people hooking up, or have they crossed the boundary, and can they keep their love affair secret when Haye’s is in one of the biggest bands in the world, adored by millions and has journalists and fans following his every move?

I wasn’t sure going into this book whether it would be for me or not, but I picked it up at 5 am one morning when I couldn’t sleep and before I knew it I was a hundred pages in and loving it. In the beginning I thought, like Solène did that the age gap, her being old enough to be Haye’s mother he was just playing the field and had scored himself an older woman. However, the two really worked together and fitted well.

About halfway through the book, I did start to wonder if the whole story was just going to be about the pair hooking up in different locations, them enjoying each other’s company in different hotels, beach houses, etc and my interest started to drop as I wanted more. I began to tire of the same old, same old, but then the book took a different direction, and boom I was back intrigued again.

The plot is sexy and full-on. The pace ebbed and flowed, at times it felt so slow, then other times it felt like it was going at warp speed. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the ending. I have mixed feelings about it too, as it felt a little short but then I didn’t see any other way for the book to end.

The Idea of You is going to cause a big stir this year. I can see some people finding their new book boyfriend in Haye’s Campbell or his bandmates. I wouldn’t be surprised if I see this being adapted for the big screen in the future as it has the kind of plot you can perfectly visualise and characters that are in a situation I doubt happens often but were completely realistic within it.

*When I wrote this review I didn’t realise the book had been commissioned for adaptation already.