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Rosie Dunne
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Rosie Dunne (2004) (edit title/settings)

aka 'Where Rainbows End' / 'Love, Rosie'

by Cecelia Ahern (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Sometimes you have to look at life in a whole new way . . . From the bestselling author of PS, I Love You comes a delightfully enchanting novel about what happens when two people who are meant to be together just can't seem to get it right. Rosie and Alex are destined for one... read more

Summary edit see section history

Rosie and Alex are best friends ever since they were very young, confiding in each other and telling each other everything. The story is told through the form of instant messages, letters, invitations, e-mails, etc.

While on a family holiday in London at the age of eight, Rosie wrote to... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Rosie and Alex are best friends ever since they were very young, confiding in each other and telling each other everything. The story is told through the form of instant messages, letters, invitations, e-mails, etc.

While on a family holiday in London at the age of eight, Rosie wrote to Alex about her hopes to become a hotel manager at a famous hotel and to eventually own one. Alex, who was on a family vacation of his own, wrote back to Rosie and told her his ambition to be a doctor after he was treated by a doctor when he broke his arm at a swimming pool.

Later on in their teen years, the two of them, who were continuously getting into trouble in the childhood, continued to do so in their teen years. It was said in an instant message between the two of them, that they both got suspended from school after playing hooky and getting drunk at a local pub. Rosie, who had to get her stomach pumped due to alcohol poisoning, was resting in her bedroom while Alex was punished by having to work as an assistant in his father's office. Alex later started a romantic relationship with Bethany Williams, who was a few years older than Alex and was his colleague at the time.

In their senior year, Alex tells Rosie that his father took up a different job and that he had to move to Boston. Alex and Rosie decide to persuade his parents and convince them to let Alex stay with Rosie and her family in Ireland so he could finish his senior year. His father objects and Alex eventually moves to Boston. A devastated Rosie confides in her older sister, Stephanie who lives in France after dropping out of college.

Rosie later set up plans to study hotel management at the same college in Boston as Alex, who plans to study medicine. Rosie then invites Alex to a high school dance at her school. He accepts her invitation but failed to attend because of busy flight schedules and unavailable flights. Rosie then attends the dance with Brian, a bully to Rosie and Alex in their childhood.

It is later revealed in a letter to Alex that Rosie got pregnant when she and Brian got drunk at the dance. Rosie cancels her plans to further her studies in Boston and remains in Ireland as a high-school educated teenager, coping with teenage pregnancy.

Soon, Rosie invites Alex to the christening of her daughter, Katie. The two of them meet up and have a good time. Alex then invites Rosie to come visit him in Boston and that he was planning to take her on a tour of his new home. He flies back to Boston, leaving Rosie to take care of Katie.

With her life in shambles, Rosie decides to get a job, provide a steady income for her and Katie and finally move out of her parents' home. She eventually find a job as an assistant at a factory and when financially stable enough, she rented a small apartment for herself and Katie. At this point in her life, Rosie has low self-esteem and befriends her colleague, Ruby, who is twelve years older.

Rosie finally manages to visit Alex who introduces her to his girlfriend, Sally, who was also taking a course in medicine in the same college as him. When the two of them were left alone, Alex and Rosie share a kiss which leaves Rosie embarrassed as Sally walks into the room, announcing to Rosie about their engagement. Rosie leaves Boston in a hurry and the two never spoke of their kiss.

Years later, Katie turns four and befriends a boy of about the same age named Toby. She writes to Alex regularly and Alex tries his best to reply in his busy schedule as a doctor. Alex sends her a heart-shaped locket for her birthday with a picture of him on one side and Rosie on the other inside.

Alex later invites Rosie and Katie to his wedding to Sally. Rosie tells Ruby about her feelings towards Alex's marriage and how upset she felt when Alex walked down the aisle with his new wife rather than with her.

It becomes clear that Alex's new wife has a strong dislike for Rosie but she sends cards to Katie always excluding Rosie from her letters and cards. Later on, Alex has a son, Josh who becomes close to Katie, despite their age difference.

Rosie meets a man and starts a serious relationship with him while Alex is in the middle of a messy divorce, fighting for custody over Josh. His ex-wife gains custody of Josh and Alex is all alone.

While a few months into her relationship, Rosie tells Alex about her boyfriend, Greg Collins, and how thoughtful and considerate and nice he was towards her and Katie and that she moved in with him. Alex warns Rosie not to rush into things and to not marry him so soon. But his warning became pointless when Rosie revealed that she is engaged to Greg Collins.

Rosie invites Alex and Josh to her wedding and he was introduced to Toby, Katie's best friend. He wrote in a letter that he felt Rosie was with the wrong man and that he felt upset when she walked down the aisle with Greg after the ceremony. He leaves the letter on the kitchen counter of Rosie's marital home, hoping that she will find it and realize how he feels for her.

Rosie, who was fired from her job as an assistant in a factory, took up a job as a school secretary in Katie's school. Katie is now eleven and Rosie works for the headmistress who was once her teacher when she attended the same school, Miss Casey. It was revealed that Rosie never got the letter Alex had left for her. He refused to tell her what was in the letter and tells her that she had to read it herself. Later, Alex receives an instant message from Greg who found his letter to Rosie and threatens Alex about starting a romantic relationship with Rosie.

Miss Casey, upon hearing about Rosie's intentions of studying hotel management, convinces her to take classes and to get a diploma in hotel management. Rosie manages to achieve her goal and ends up working at a horrible hotel that nobody knew about. Soon after she quit and got a job at a famous hotel which was opening in Dublin. Rosie soon got a job offer at a hotel out of town as a hotel manager. She decides to relocate her family to be closer to her job. Katie is devastated when she hears this and both she and Toby come up with plans to run away so that they can never part. Eventually, Rosie turned down the job upon realizing that Katie's separation from Toby would be just like when Alex moved to Boston. Rosie gives Ruby free salsa dance lessons for Ruby's 40th birthday, and the two attend the classes together.

Soon, Rosie finds out that Greg is cheating on her because her younger brother, who was working at a hotel just out of town, noticed him with another woman. Rosie is left on her own with Katie and moves out of her marital home and into a small apartment above an Indian restaurant.

During the time of her divorce, Rosie finds solace in a divorced people's chatroom, where they offer support and bad-mouth their ex-spouses. She calls herself Buttercup. She later says that Alex always called her that ever since she starred in a school play as a character called 'Buttercup'. When Rosie lets out her feelings to Alex through instant messaging, she lets out all her most embarrassing secrets. Although she later finds out that it was Bethany Williams, Alex's first girlfriend who was responding to her at the time. She later finds out that Alex is in a serious relationship with Bethany when he met her again as he was working with her father who was the head surgeon in a Boston hospital.

Rosie later receives a letter from Brian, Katie's biological father, who had run away for years after he found out about Rosie's pregnancy. He now owns a nightclub on an island that is a tourist hotspot and Katie, who dreams of becoming a DJ at a nightclub, begins to bond with Brian. Rosie meanwhile, quits the salsa classes and Ruby eventually attends classes with her overweight son, Teddy.

Alex and Bethany soon marry but unlike his last wedding, Rosie did not attend. However, she read a report in the papers about their wedding as Reginald Williams, Bethany's father, is a very well-known man and the wedding was described as 'rosie' due to the many roses that were used as ornaments.

As time passes, Ruby finds out that her son's hidden talent was dancing. Alex and Bethany have a son, Theo and Katie and Toby are no longer the close friends they once were. Soon Alex and Bethany get divorced and again, his ex-wife gains custody over their son.

By the end of the book, Rosie and Alex are 50-years-old. Katie, who turns 31, meets up again with Toby who became a dentist just like he aspired to be. Katie writes to her mother of her kiss with Toby and that she realized that she and Toby were meant to be. She then goes off to live with Toby. Ruby, who turns 62 in the end, enjoy watching and playing with her grandchildren (her son Gary marries his salsa instructor). Rosie inherits her parents new home by the beach which her mother bought shortly before she died. Rosie turns the big house into a bed and breakfast (although she hates B&B's, she plans to own her own hotel later in life). Alex still lives in Boston. The divorced people in the chatroom have their own happily ever after when they eventually get over their divorce.

In the epilogue, Rosie finally reads the letter Alex left for her on the kitchen counter many years ago. Greg, who felt guilty for still keeping the letter, gave it to her. Rosie, who printed out every instant message and e-mail she received and still kept every letter, birthday card and invitation she received, read everything she had collected over the course of her life. She realizes that Alex does love her as much as she loves him. As the doorbell rings, she rushes downstairs in an attempt to answer the door but slips on the last step. She finds that she did not fall down, but rather, was caught by someone. She realizes that an old and ageing Alex let himself in and caught her before she fell.

Characters/People edit see section history

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “You deserve someone who loves you with every single beat of his heart, someone who thinks about you constantly, someone who spends every minute of every day just wondering what you’re doing, where you are, who you’re with, and if you’re OK. You need someone who can help you reach your dreams and protect you from your fears. You need someone who will treat you with respect, love every part of you, especially your flaws. You should be with someone who could make you happy, really happy, dancing on air happy.”
  • “Ruby: ...What's so good about being 20? I call them the materialist years. The years we get distracted by all the bullshit. Then we cop on when we hit our 30s and spend those years trying to make up for the 20s. But your 40s? Those years are for enjoying it.Rosie: Hmmm good point. What are the 50s for?Ruby: Fixing what you spoiled in your 40s.Rosie: Great. Looking forward to it”
  • “Life is funny isn’t it? Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out,just when you finally begin to plan something, get excited about something,and feel like you know what direction you’re heading in, the paths change,the signs change, the wind blows the other way, north is suddenly south, andeast is west, and you’re lost. It is so easy to lose your way, to lose direction.And that’s with following all the signposts”
  • “what you don't know, you don't miss”
  • “There were hundreds of them spread across the floor, each telling its own tale of triumph or sadness, each letter representing a phase in her life. She had kept them all.”
  • ““Once again, I don’t quite know where I’m headed Steph. It seems thatevery few years I’m shoveling up the pieces of my life and starting fromscratch all over. No matter what I do or how hard I try I can’t seem to reachthe dizzy heights of happiness, success, and security, like so many people do.And I’m not talking about becoming a millionaire and living happily everafter. I just mean reaching a point in my life that I can stop what I’m doing,take a look around me, breathe a sigh of relief, and think “I’m where I wantto be now.”
  • “Things change so quickly. Just when you get used to something, zap! Itchanges. Just when you begin to understand someone, zap! They grow up. Thesame is happening with Katie. She changes every day; her face just becomes somuch more grown-up every time I look at her. Sometimes I have to stop pretendingI’m interested in what she’s saying in order to realize that I actually aminterested. We go shopping for clothes together and I take her advice, we eatout for lunch and giggle over silly things. I just can’t cast my mind back to thetime when my child stopped being a child and became a person.””
  • “Katie is like my calendar, watching her growand change. She is growing up so fast, learning to have opinions of her own,learning that I don’t have the answers to everything. And the moment a childbegins to understand that, you know you’re in trouble.”
  • “Mistakes are the portals of discovery”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • Our life is made up of time; our days are measured in hours, our pay measured by those hours, our knowledge is measured by years. We grab a quick few minutes in our busy day to have a coffee break. We rush back to our desks, we watch the clock, we live by appointments. And yet your time eventually runs out and you wonder in your heart of hearts if those seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and decades were being spent the best way they possibly could. In other words, if you could change anything, would you?
    Highlighted by 20 Kindle customers
  • There’s no limit to what you can dream. You expect the unexpected, you believe in magic, in fairy tales, and in possibilities. Then you grow older and that innocence is shattered and somewhere along the way the reality of life gets in the way and you’re hit by the realization that you can’t be all you wanted to be, you just might have to settle for a little bit less. Or perhaps a variation of what you once wanted.
    Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers
  • I’ve learned that home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling.
    Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
  • Why do we stop believing in ourselves? Why do we let facts and figures and anything but dreams rule our lives?
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • Parents are the barometers of emotions for children and it has a domino effect.
    Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
  • You need someone who can help you reach your dreams and who can protect you from your fears. You need someone who will treat you with respect, love every part of you, especially your flaws. You should be with someone who can make you happy, really happy, dancing on air happy. Someone who should have taken the chance to be with you years ago instead of getting scared and being too afraid to try.
    Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
  • Well that’s the problem with paradise—nothing attracts a serpent quite like it.
    Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers
  • People who say it’s a long story mean it’s a stupid short one that they’re too embarrassed and couldn’t be bothered to tell.
    Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers
  • Ever since people are kids they use their parents as some sort of measurement for how bad a situation is.
    Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers
  • A bit of ink on her skin doesn’t tarnish the goodness or dim the brightness that shines from her.
    Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers
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First Sentence edit see section history

To Alex, You are invited to my 7th birthday party on Tuesday the 8th of April in my house.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Chapter 1 to Chapter 50

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Cecelia Ahern (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Silje Beite Løken (Translator)
  2. Petra Mrduljaš (Translator) - Croatian

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: HarperCollins
Country: United Kingdom
Publication Date: 2004
ISBN: 0-00-716501-3
Page Count: 592

Classification edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • PS, I Love You

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