‘We’ve all done this. We know what it feels like. We can write it down.’

A beautiful, razor-sharp debut by Sarah Handyside, Instructions for Heartbreak is a life-affirming novel about female friendship, self-love and how to survive a broken heart.

What if heartbreak came with a manual?

It starts with a late-night knock on the door. Thirty-something best friends Dee, Liv and Rosa share a flat in south London, while Katie, the fourth member of their friendship group, lives close by with her long-term boyfriend. But, when Katie’s nine-year relationship ends – suddenly and brutally – she turns up on their doorstep with no idea where she’ll live, what to do next or how to do anything after spending so long with her life entwined with someone else’s.

Out comes the martini shaker (an old, well-washed gherkin jar) and, with an unused sketchbook, an idea. They’ll make Katie the handbook that she needs to process her heartbreak and start rebuilding her life. There are notes on tears, hangovers and roast chicken, scribblings about music, new bedding and pure, white-hot rage. Everywhere there is permission to feel agony and elation and anger, and everything that is extraordinary and appalling.

But Katie is not the only one nursing a broken heart. Rosa is a hopeless romantic, despite still reeling from her ex’s infidelity. Scarred by her ex’s parting words, Dee is committed to being commitment-free. And while Liv knows that breaking up with her girlfriend was what she wanted, she can’t help but wonder if she did the right thing . . .