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graceybookster's review
5.0
Moderate: Grief, Death, and Suicidal thoughts
nicolecurlsuptoread's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
📌 You’ll dig this if you like
Emma and Jesse were high school sweethearts, all the firsts! They build a life together away from their families and the day before their first wedding anniversary, Jesse takes a work trip and is assumed dead when his helicopter crashes in the Pacific.
Almost four years later, he calls Emma to tell her he’s alive and he’s coming home to her. Except, she’s engaged now to the guy who’s loved her since high school.
This book ruined me. I haven’t had a good book hangover in a while and One True Loves did it. It was devastating and tragic and beautiful and all the adjectives that can be used to describe a book that will stay with you.
The romance was secondary to the themes of loss, grief, and how to move forward. Then, how to choose between the loves of your life. What do you do when you’ve always believed in one true love, but you have two?
📌 What stood out
» The chapter when Emma goes back home. Moving from the story being in the first person, then as if it’s being narrated from above, like an out of body experience, helped me connect to the grief piece. That’s what it feels like, and it was perfectly captured.
» In the prologue, Emma talks about everyone’s life having a moment that splits it into before and after, pre and post. The poignancy of that concept was visceral for me. I know my moment and can recall it with stunning clarity. I was hooked by and connected with One True Loves from page 6.
📌 Moments
Let me leave you with this moral of the story quote:
"There is nothing more romantic than this. Holding the very person that you thought you lost, and knowing you'll never lose them again. I don't think that true love means your only love. I think true love means loving truly. Loving purely. Loving wholly."
Graphic: Grief, Death, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Infidelity
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
chelle22's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Vomit, Death, Emotional abuse, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Alcohol, Infidelity, Medical content, Cancer, Self harm, Car accident, Cursing, and Grief
datskira's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Moderate: Alcohol, Grief, and Death
Minor: Cancer, Suicidal thoughts, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual content, and Confinement
tiffanymmf's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, and Gore
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
ksamaine95's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Loved majority of the writing but it left me smh.
Other than my dislike for the direction she took the story in, TJR still gave me the love bug.
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Death, Eating disorder, Injury/Injury detail, and Grief
ellaticonstellation's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
I like that this discusses how people change, we evolve and that's okay.
It became preachy at the end that's why I deducted a star. But overall, I enjoyed this. Thank you, Taylor✨
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Cursing, Abandonment, Grief, and Suicidal thoughts
stephtoriz's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Graphic: Grief and Death
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts
artemisvlassi's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Moderate: Death and Infidelity
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
mari1532's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Synopsis: In High School Emma Blair dreamed of a life as far away from her hometown as possible. And when she goes to a party in her junior year of high school she encounters the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with, Jesse. After almost a decade of dating and a single year of marriage though fate intervenes and the only man Emma has ever loved is gone forever.
As Emma tries to put her life back together she has to challenge everything she thought she knew about herself. As she begins to forage a new identity for herself she also wants to love again and her high school friend Sam might be just the man to teach her that she can.
Thoughts:
I also wish that Sam had made more of an appearance in the story. Reid did an excellent job of conveying how much Emma loves and cares for Sam, but I would have liked to see them interact a little more throughout the story.
I absolutely did not like Jesse at all. Start to finish. Did I feel bad for him because of the horrific things he endured, sure did. Did it make me like him any better? Sure didn't.
This is an interesting work of literature that held my attention and I was really invested in the outcome. Although it did feel that the cultural standards of domesticity were the driving force of some of Emma's decisions rather than a shifting of her priorities. Overall, not a bad read.
Graphic: Grief, Injury/Injury detail, and Death
Moderate: Toxic relationship
Minor: Suicidal thoughts