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I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

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Ella and Lowe are teenagers when they first meet. For her, it’s love at first sight. But it’s safest to love from afar, where the friendship zone is her safety net and she can’t get hurt.

Over the next fifteen years, they share grief, laughter, friendship, bottles of cider, cigarettes in the rain. But there’s one thing Ella can never ask whether he feels the same way about her. And every time Lowe kisses another girl, Ella feels her heart break just that little bit more.

So can you ever really just be friends with the love of your life? And what happens when the day comes when you can’t keep the beautiful, terrifying, all-consuming truth to yourself anymore?

From a unique new voice in adult fiction, I Love You, I Love You, I Love You is a glorious nostalgia trip for anyone who has ever known the exquisite pain and pleasure of first love.

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2024

239 people are currently reading
5918 people want to read

About the author

Laura Dockrill

40 books165 followers

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5 stars
801 (30%)
4 stars
1,071 (41%)
3 stars
582 (22%)
2 stars
115 (4%)
1 star
38 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 455 reviews
Profile Image for Kirsty .
3,771 reviews342 followers
May 16, 2024
Absolutely nails the 2000s teen experience to the point where I was cringing at points because I've been there. All those ridiculous things we did.
Profile Image for AboutEstelle.
329 reviews1,370 followers
February 13, 2025
Don't call me "kid"
Don't call me "baby"
Look at this idiotic fool that you made me
You taught me a secret language I can't speak with anyone else
And you know damn well
For you, I would ruin myself
A million little times
Profile Image for Alannah.
149 reviews
May 3, 2024
Cute, cute, CUTE! Oh this book encapsulates that all-consuming feeling of full on fancying someone SO WELL. Especially for those who were teenagers in the 2000s. All the references were so spot on! It took me right back to being an awkward teenager; feeling confident and shy all at the same time, being obsessed with boys, the stupid things you do to save face but end up saving nothing at all. The miscommunication, the angst, the slow burn - I loved it. It took a few chapters to get used to the quick cadence but it makes sense for the character. Clever and different to recent romances I’ve read!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
Profile Image for Caitlyn.
270 reviews32 followers
July 22, 2024
Never did I think at my big age I would be wishing to go back to my 13 year old self to fall in love again for the first time, but that’s where this book has left me. 😭

Thank you deeply HQ Australia for sending me this ARC! Releases 31st July. 🗓️

Marketed for fans of One Day, 30 year old Ella is feeling unfulfilled with most aspects of her life, feeling the pinch to make tough decisions, and is finding it impossible not to reminisce about the first boy she loved Lowe. The story shifts between present day and 15 years earlier when the two met as teenagers until the gap is bridged, and a frustrating and endearing portraits is painted of Ella and Lowe. On a technical level, I really appreciated how skilfully the author managed to change her narration voice for the same character when reverting to her 15 year old self - it was very subtle and it wasn’t until late in the book I realised how the inner voice had matured throughout - big props! My only issue with the reading experience was I wished the two timelines were mixed a bit more, there was a couple stretches where I was feeling a bit over the ‘then’ or ‘now’ and desperately wanted to switch it up sooner than it was written.

Young Ella had me laughing to myself and I really saw my teenage self in her; this one’s for the women who have willingly humiliated themselves for a crumb of affection (we need a support group). When she sees Lowe for the first time she knows she’s seen the boy she will marry, fireworks, world stops turning, fade to black, no questions. In an attempt to be the ‘cool girl’ she effectively friendzones herself convinced she’s not good enough for the god she has created in her mind. And can you blame for thinking they’re meant to be when they seem inexplicably pulled together like magnets through the years?

#iloveyoux3 is a love story about missed opportunities, holding your tongue and the part of your first love you carry with you (if you’re in the majority that in fact are not going to be together for the rest of your lives). Laura also does a phenomenal job of exploring gritty friendships between girls & women, an oldest child trying to keep their family afloat and creating the life you want.

I’m not a romance girly but had a good feeling about this one and it did me right. Highly rec this for your tbr!! 📚
Profile Image for Aoife Cassidy McM.
826 reviews379 followers
August 12, 2024
This came along on holidays with me based solely on the cover and the blurb, with me thinking it was going to be a fairly light read. I started it with some dubiousness, thinking perhaps this might be too fluffy and not for me. How wrong I was.

Cut to a couple of days later. I’m sitting by the pool with tears streaming down my face as I finish it. Almost despite myself, I fell for this book in a big way.

Ella and Lowe have been best friends since childhood, having clicked almost immediately. As they grow up together, Ella’s love for Lowe goes deep but she harbours it secretly, burying it deep inside.

As the years pass, while their friendship ebbs and flows, Ella’s feelings do not. Will she ever get over her first love? Will she ever find out if he feels the same? Is it True Love?

What differentiates this book is the humour. It is so funny and so sincere, Ella is impossible not to love, as is Lowe. It’s empathetic and warm-hearted and I defy anyone not to laugh and cry out loud at least once. I thought I was too old for this, how wrong I was.

This is very much a book for fans of David Nicholls and Nick Hornby. It’s as nostalgic as Talking at Night, but it’s so much sharper and funnier and more joyful and life-affirming. Loved it. 🫶 4-4.5/5⭐️

Many, many thanks to @harpercollinsire @courtneysbooks for the advance reader copy. 😘
Profile Image for Katie.
711 reviews19 followers
June 22, 2024
Incredible.

I could relate so much to the inner ramblings of anxiety and disappointment and hope and embarrassment that was Ella.

Such a wonderful and difficult read of two people who had always loved each other but only one was constantly ready to act on that love and had their heart broken over and over and over again.

I perhaps would have given one more chapter for the grovel but I did enjoy the ending. It was a long time coming.
Profile Image for Raquel Bonelli.
275 reviews15 followers
August 21, 2024
When I read the blurb of this book, I was obsessed! I ran to a bookshop to buy it because it is everything I was keen to read. I love friends to lovers, I love dual timelines, I'm a millennial, I love books with 2000s references.... but I felt so disappointed with this book.

Well, I felt like the 2000s references were a long list of things dumped into the story, Ella speaks a million miles a minute (yes, you can feel this on the page, no audiobook needed), and she digresses so much that it felt like stream of consciousness in 2.0x speed. I felt drained! I couldn't connect with the story because I was losing my concentration all the time.

Also, I was so excited with the dual timeline, but Ella sounds exactly the same when she is 14, when she is 19 and when she is 30+.

I really really really wanted to love this book and I think the story had soooo much potential, but it felt like I was reading a YA book with a character at a 2.0x speed.
Profile Image for Maddie.
666 reviews256 followers
June 7, 2025
I Love You I Love You I Love You is a beautiful love story, tender, funny, full of nostalgia.
You know that intense crazy make-you-do-crazy-unexpected-why-oh-why things first love? That feeling of angst and want and absolute sheer joy and primal fear? Because you know first love? That's what that book is about. That all consuming absolutely totally completely in love forever and ever can't breathe love.
But it's also a story of loving someone so much that you push them away, you friend zone them. And then you spend your life trying to be okay with it. And also trying to be okay with your love being with somebody else.
It's complicated. It's messy. It hurts. That book tells it all in such a superb way. Laura Dockrill writes with such ease, such honesty. It's so relatable, so so true. And it makes you laugh and cry and remember.
Ella and Lowe - it's their love story. It's their will they won't they. But it's also my love story. It's quite possibly yours too.
That book is pure perfection. I'm obsessed. I read it in one sitting and absolutely loved it! Easy five stars and one of my favourite reads of the year so far.
Profile Image for Jonathan Pool.
714 reviews130 followers
August 6, 2024
Its fair to say that I’m not exactly the target demographic for this novel. I note that on Goodreads there are a mere three male reviews out of 321 (@29.7.24). Also I haven’t read very much teen fiction to assess how it stands up to the seemingly hundreds of new releases pumped on Tik Tok.

I liked the book. It’s very chaste, and that’s not a bad thing. The male and female leads come across as old fashioned; they are not flashy, and they certainly don’t dive in to relationships and commitment. Both Ella Cole and Lowe Archer are family orientated, and enjoy life’s simple things. Even Ella’s girlfriends are fun loving in a sensible way (though Bianca has her moments!).

This evokes memories of “When Harry Met Sally", but substitute the South Bank and Vauxhall, London, and Brighton, for New York City.

Its also rather nice, as a male reader to find that the supporting cast of men (Jackson and Nile) are also good guys and not the philandering apologies for men who populate so many millennial works of fiction.

Its clear, from interviews, that the story told is largely autobiographical. It would be interesting to know how the actual couple (Laura and Hugo) come across together in real life. Hugo/Lowe, a real life rock star, has a lot to live up to as a genuinely approachable and down to earth person!

I read this because I met Laura Dockrill at the 2024 Women’s Prize event (she was a judge) and she is such a nice, and fun, person, that I had to read her book. I’m pleased I did.
July 10, 2024
3.5-4 ⭐'s

If you would've told me I would enjoy this book when I first started reading it, I would've laughed in your face. For me, it was bad. The main character was sooo annoying and a chatterbox. She went on and on about nothing. It certainly didn't help that the majority of the story in the beginning was when she was twelve/thirteen and up. It's all the annoying, awkward teenage problems rolled into a very long run on sentence/paragraph/chapter (you get the hint).

Thankfully, I somehow persevered and it did improve.( Yay!) And by the end, I didn't want to put the book down.
Profile Image for Sophia.
17 reviews4 followers
September 8, 2024
Actual PERFECTION. Sobbed at the end when I realised it was autobiographical! perfect depiction of love/especially young teen feelings ❤️‍🔥

‘Lowe is one letter away from the word LOVE. His name is hidden in the word sunflower which is my favourite flower. I can’t help but think it’s meant to be.’

🥹
Profile Image for Alycia_HT.
43 reviews32 followers
July 30, 2025
Je veux lire que des livres comme ça mtn, c'est terrible 😭
Profile Image for Sarah Pollok.
93 reviews3 followers
December 17, 2024
Realistically a 4.5 but I’m feeling generous so we’ll round up.
I BLOODY LOVED THIS BOOK. I’ve never read anything that captured the early 2000s experience of loving and crushing and being crushed as a girl so well. I laughed, I internally screamed, I didn’t quite cry but it was brilliant.
Only note was the writing was a little slow at points, especially when the author had built tension so high, so I ended up skimming a few paragraphs.
Profile Image for Clara.
267 reviews
July 15, 2024
OMG j'ai adoré. C'est vraiment tout ce que j'aime : un livre qui sonne juste, qui montre la vie avec une justesse si grande que chaque page je pensais "mais tellement putain" ou "ah mais OK je suis pas si weird en fait". Ça parle d'une histoire d'amour, mais pas que. Ça parle d'à quel point c'est dur de parler, d'à quel point la fierté, la peur, ça peut nous retenir parfois, nous faire faire les "mauvais" choix (je veux voir personne dire que c'est redondant ou qu'ils ont qu’à se parler pcq fuck it c'est dur). C'est drôle et c'est touchant aussi. Plein de réf de pop-culture (définitivement une lecture pour les millennials (mais pas que)). Ça dépeint avec tellement de justesse l'adolescence et le début de la vie adulte que c'est doux-amer (mais aussi vraiment cool). Ella est vraiment un super personnage, très attachante et réaliste, imparfaite comme il faut. Bref, I love it, I love it, I love it. Ça fait partie de mes meilleures lectures de ces derniers mois.

Les 20 dernières pages étaient juste un peu too much pour moi, mais ça c'est parce que je déteste les déclarations d'amour mdr.
Profile Image for Kirsty Capes.
Author 7 books152 followers
October 4, 2023
Nostalgic, mucky, bittersweet. A visceral portrait of adolescence in the in-between of the noughties, that weird pocket of time before smartphones and universal internet, of MySpace and calling your mates on the house phone and shag bands and Green Day and all those insecurities and the sharpness of every new experience and feeling. Laura captures all of it so deliciously.
Profile Image for Polly Inglis.
33 reviews
December 16, 2024
First dip into an audiobook on @hoesforprose recommendation and boy did I enjoy it!!
Felt like I was in the story, was fun, light and funny!
Profile Image for Jenny / Wondrous Reads.
603 reviews83 followers
June 20, 2024
I Love You, I Love You, I Love You is the nostalgic book of my dreams. It’s an addictive, heartfelt coming of age story set in the early 2000s, bursting with sunlight and friendships and first love. I enjoyed every page of it, and I think it’s Laura Dockrill’s best work to date.

This book really took me back — I was thirteen in 2000, one year younger than main character Ella, and happily wearing my extremely baggy emo jeans that were always wet through up to the knees. I was discovering what my music taste would look like for the rest of my life (still emo), navigating friendships and realising that no, not all boys should be ignored. Honestly, this book is like stepping into a time machine and being whisked back to my teen years, and I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that’s quite captured that feeling.

Set back then and also right now, I Love You, I Love You, I Love You follows Ella, her best friend Lowe, her family and her group of friends through times of turbulence, joy, and teenage confusion. It’s about discoveries and feelings, hair dye wands and cigarettes, and perfectly captures what it was like growing up before social media and 24/7 news.

I don’t want to give anything away about what exactly happens in this book, but I will say that it includes a romance for the ages, a will-they won’t-they of epic proportions, so swoonworthy and sigh-inducing that I couldn’t read fast enough. It depicts friendships that will last a lifetime, and a family life that will resonate with generations past and present. It’s so good I want to read it again, giving Ella a big hug as I go. Teenage years can be the toughest of them all, but often the funniest too. I Love You, I Love You, I Love You is brilliant from start to finish, and I do indeed love it times three. What a book!
Profile Image for Lulufrances.
911 reviews87 followers
July 6, 2024
Actual rating 4,5

Ok so why did this make me cry (thrice; I cried, I cried, I cried) and A Little Life didn't? (I'm just a girl)

One of my fave things is when people tell me their real life lovestories and since this is a thinly veiled autofiction of Laura Dockrill's, I was obviously all here for it.
I feel like I know Laura at this point, the writing was so her, so idiosyncratic, so real and bubbly and everything she seems to be.
(Also, you know that as soon as Barry M make-up and Ribena gets mentioned you are in for an English teen story deluxe and even if I just got the condensed holiday version of a British youth, it all felt so incredibly familiar.)

So, whew! This was such an unexpectedly intense reading experience, I feel like I've just gone through all the stages of love/grief/love myself.
Missed chances wreckkk me, miscommunication – or in fact NO communication – is the dumbest thing ever, but I get it, I do.
And agh I love the moments when all turns around and all that anguish and bittersweetness just hurts so nicely.
I'll miss Ella and Lowe (Laura and Hugo, lol).
Profile Image for Jo Lee.
1,166 reviews22 followers
June 28, 2024
Please do your ears a favour and listen to the audiobook of this title, I think Laura Dockrill made completely the right decision on narrating it herself. From the first few words I was entranced, its lyrical wordy perfection!!

A love story for the ages, jam packed with wit, nostalgia, angst, and 18 years of will they won’t theys over a now and then timeline.I loved this little gang so much. The writing is beyond beautiful. I’m so glad I don’t do social media I’d literally be looking for the boy I loved when I was 14 right now.

Netflix will commission this and the theme tune will be Natasha Bedingfield - These Words

All the stars 🌟
#Jorecommends

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK audio for the opportunity to listen to this title in return for an honest review.
Profile Image for Sarah J. Best.
72 reviews8 followers
August 10, 2024
I really wanted to like this book and the first few chapters were great but after that it was just pop culture references and miscommunication and slow burn and sorry 300 pages in and still no kiss?? I can’t
Profile Image for Beth Cooper.
217 reviews5 followers
October 30, 2024
i’ll eat my hat if this author wasn’t a fan of louise rennison growing up. this was so much fun. the cover doesn’t really match the vibe at all tho
Profile Image for Cindy Cindy  (I have no shelf-control) .
74 reviews21 followers
December 27, 2024
Oops, I’m against the tide on this one. Took a while to get into and dragged in a way that I might have been able to tolerate in a sixteen episode Korean drama but not in a book.
Also, I guess my last book of the year; so sad I couldn’t even read twenty books but hey I kept my kids alive and I live to read another day- Lol!
Profile Image for Grace Bucknell.
56 reviews2 followers
December 17, 2024
No book has captured the agony and hilarity of first crushes, girlhood and getting older better than this. I laughed, cried, and highlighted many many excerpts. It’s an absolute must read!
Profile Image for Miriam Bucknell.
90 reviews1 follower
October 2, 2025
this was the best! so much of it i could relate to. the writing was superb, lots of great lines and dialogue, including inner monologue. a must read
Profile Image for Hannah McCullough.
305 reviews8 followers
August 31, 2025
Loved the nostalgia of this book, but unfortunately the crazy levels of miscommunication between the two main characters made it a bit of a slog. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for this type of story!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 455 reviews

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