“In her twenties, Emma Blair marries her high school sweetheart, Jesse. They build a life for themselves, far away from the expectations of their parents and the people of their hometown in Massachusetts. They travel the world together, living life to the fullest and seizing every opportunity for adventure.
On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever.
Emma quits her job and moves home in an effort to put her life back together. Years later, now in her thirties, Emma runs into an old friend, Sam, and finds herself falling in love again. When Emma and Sam get engaged, it feels like Emma’s second chance at happiness.
That is, until Jesse is found. He’s alive, and he’s been trying all these years to come home to her. With a husband and a fiancé, Emma has to now figure out who she is and what she wants, while trying to protect the ones she loves.
Who is her one true love? What does it mean to love truly?
Emma knows she has to listen to her heart. She’s just not sure what it’s saying.”
All of you here on my site know that I’ve been going through a Taylor Jenkins Reid-volution lately! After finally getting around to reading Daisy Jones and the Six and falling in love with that story and Reid’s writing style, I went on to devour her other highly-lauded book The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Another smash hit. I loved these books so much that Reid has launched herself right onto the list of my favorite authors, and definitely the authors that I’m watching right now. In that vein, I was curious to see what else she’d written and so I went searching, which is when I found One True Loves.
From the synopsis, One True Loves had my attention. I don’t know about you, but I am a sucker for the whole “loved one back from the dead” trope. All the emotion, the reconciling with new realities, the nuance of human experience in that extreme, all of that appeals to a fascinated part of me. I knew I was going to like this book and, you know what? I did. I really did.
One True Loves is not a simple, sweet, linear love story. That is what I loved best about it. This is a messy story about the messiest parts of our lives: the times when we have to reevaluate everything we thought we knew about life. The main character, Emma, has her life turned upside-down twice in this book: once, when her first love and husband Jesse is lost at sea, and again, years later when he is found and brought back home. This may be a romance novel, but it is also about how we pick ourselves up and move forward after heartbreak. It’s about grief and time, and about how we love in so many different ways.
I cared for the characters in this book. I cared about them. I know that I was wholly swept into this book because it mattered so much to me what happened to them. Reid does such a nuanced and beautiful job of pulling apart all of the tangled, blended emotions that her characters feel in this story. I cheered for them and snarked at them and even rolled my eyes a few times, but mostly I just wanted them to be happy. That’s a powerful thing when an author can create that. Creating characters with depth and complexity seems to be a trend throughout all of Reid’s novels so far and I applaud her for it. It is so masterfully done and creates such an emotional impact.
One True Loves was a quick read but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how perfectly sized, paced, and planned it was too. The book felt like it moved effortlessly from thought to thought all the way until the end, which was– perfect, actually. I loved it. The ending left me happy and teary-eyed and so impressed with the love and nuance used throughout this book.
One True Loves was romantic and sad, beautiful and sweet, and somehow even funny sometimes. All in all, this was a book that I truly enjoyed. I hope you do too.
You can find One True Loves here @ Goodreads & Amazon
Hope you all are surviving the Monday! x — A
Story-eyed Reviews 