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A review by beate251
This Love by Lotte Jeffs
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Ari (pansexual male) and Mae (gay female) meet at college and become life-long friends, navigating traumas, relationships and the desire for children of their own.
This must be one of the most overhyped books in a while.
The pacing is all wrong - it starts so slowly, only to speed up like heck at the end and give us what could have been half of the book in a few pages.
And all the jumping back and forth in time from present to past to future was disorientating and confusing. I never knew in which year I was, and what the jumping to the future was good for when all we get are cryptic clues to someone who has died and later we learn it was someone we hadn't even met yet at that point. How are we meant to have emotions about someone's death we never really invested in?
I couldn't connect to any of the characters - their partying and weird family dynamics were unrelatable. I actively disliked Mae for being so selfish, and I didn't understand why it took Ari so many years to end it with the horrible gaslighting Oliver who used textbook coercive control. Some themes were repeated - we get two toxic relationships and two women struggling with fertility. For me there was way too much emphasis on having to have children any which way and in any which constellation. This book was at least 100 pages too long. So many pages and yet some characters felt underexplored. I simply wasn't gripped.
This must be one of the most overhyped books in a while.
The pacing is all wrong - it starts so slowly, only to speed up like heck at the end and give us what could have been half of the book in a few pages.
And all the jumping back and forth in time from present to past to future was disorientating and confusing. I never knew in which year I was, and what the jumping to the future was good for when all we get are cryptic clues to someone who has died and later we learn it was someone we hadn't even met yet at that point. How are we meant to have emotions about someone's death we never really invested in?
I couldn't connect to any of the characters - their partying and weird family dynamics were unrelatable. I actively disliked Mae for being so selfish, and I didn't understand why it took Ari so many years to end it with the horrible gaslighting Oliver who used textbook coercive control. Some themes were repeated - we get two toxic relationships and two women struggling with fertility. For me there was way too much emphasis on having to have children any which way and in any which constellation. This book was at least 100 pages too long. So many pages and yet some characters felt underexplored. I simply wasn't gripped.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Infertility, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Medical content, Grief, Car accident, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, and Alcohol