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lizallenknapp 's review for:
Love at First
by Kate Clayborn
Love at First is about orphans and family, loyalty and betrayal, letting go and holding on. It’s about seeing (or not seeing) different perspectives.
At first. The novel opens with sight, and it’s easy to think that’s the point—Will’s love at first sight of Nora when they are young teenagers. Even though he couldn’t actually see her. He more heard her and felt her presence. After he looks up at her on the balcony and struggles to see her, it’s easy to think this is a story all about sight and seeing things clearly. But like the characters in the book, we learn it’s not about seeing clearly. It’s about seeing differently. A different perspective that heals two broken people.
There are so many different shifts in perspective throughout the story and among all the characters—a mixture of lovable and eccentric and delightful and funny family members (no one is actually related outside each apartment, but they become each other’s family, nonetheless). The characters come to see each other and themselves differently. The biggest change in perspective is how both Will and Nora come to see themselves through the trauma and grief that’s shaped them, and what they find is a home in one another. They learn, in the end, how to love one another without restraint because: “You don’t have to love the people the way you learned at first” (278).
At first. The novel opens with sight, and it’s easy to think that’s the point—Will’s love at first sight of Nora when they are young teenagers. Even though he couldn’t actually see her. He more heard her and felt her presence. After he looks up at her on the balcony and struggles to see her, it’s easy to think this is a story all about sight and seeing things clearly. But like the characters in the book, we learn it’s not about seeing clearly. It’s about seeing differently. A different perspective that heals two broken people.
There are so many different shifts in perspective throughout the story and among all the characters—a mixture of lovable and eccentric and delightful and funny family members (no one is actually related outside each apartment, but they become each other’s family, nonetheless). The characters come to see each other and themselves differently. The biggest change in perspective is how both Will and Nora come to see themselves through the trauma and grief that’s shaped them, and what they find is a home in one another. They learn, in the end, how to love one another without restraint because: “You don’t have to love the people the way you learned at first” (278).