What has happened to Holly since P.S. I Love You and where do we join her at the start of Postscript?

It’s been seven years since Gerry’s death and six years since Holly read his last letter. She has moved on, she has got a new job, she has fallen in love, her house is for sale, she really has picked up her life and is in a positive place. After speaking about her experience with Gerry in a podcast with her sister, she’s approached by a group who call themselves the PS I Love You Club. They’ve all been inspired by her story, and the letters Gerry left for her before his death. They too are terminally ill or have life-threatening conditions, and ask Holly to help them write their letters for their loved ones. By spending time with the group and trying to get to know their personal situations in order to curate the perfect letters, Holly finds herself in the unusual position of having to look at it all from Gerry’s perspective.

I wanted to flip Holly’s experience so she is now in Gerry’s position, helping to write letters for others. In order to give the PS I Love You Club a positive experience she needs to analyse her own. Was it all entirely positive? Would she change anything? She’s forced to look at the letters Gerry left for her in a new way; the reasons why he wrote them, what they really meant, and she examines if they were the right letters for her: did they help her or hold her back? She gets sucked back into the past again, back into her memories of Gerry and the year following his death and she struggles with managing the past and her present. I also wanted to bring Gerry back by adding new memories of their relationship, which explain why he left particular letters for her and I also go more into who they were as a couple.

And most importantly it’s about who Holly is now. Hopefully this story will bring more tears and more smiles.

Postscript is out on 19 September (HarperCollins, £16.99).

Images: Barry McCall, HarperCollins

Postscript: ready for your first look at Cecelia Ahern’s follow-up to P.S. I Love You?