One True Loves – 5/5 ✩
One True Loves is a heartwarming, moving story about Emma Blair, a woman who has found herself in a place where she’s found not one, but two, true loves.
Emma spends her young adult life with a crush on Jesse Lerner from afar. Meanwhile, she works alongside Sam Kemper, whom she accidentally sent straight to the friend zone, which she regrets, until Jesse notices her. Emma and Jesse then go off to college together and build a life together on the west coast full of love and travel and they end up marrying.
Just a year after their wedding, Jesse is in a helicopter accident and is presumed dead, sending Emma into a spell of grief she’s unsure how to pull herself out of. In an effort to heal her heart and her life, she moves back home to her family in Massachusetts and embarks on a journey of healing, becoming a person she never expected to be, but loves nonetheless.
In a chance run in, Emma encounters Sam and the two fall in love and get engaged. Though she didn’t see it coming, everything in Emma’s life is perfect. That is, until she finds out Jesse is alive and her life is thrown off kilter once again.
One True Loves is such a raw and touching story of life and love and grief; it made me laugh and it made cry and I closed it feeling an intense ache but also like I’d been broken and been mended back together perfectly.
Taylor Jenkins Reid has such an incredible ability to craft realistic and raw characters, so much so that I felt each emotion Emma did as she put herself back together, as she fell in love with Sam, as she navigated what her life could be with Jesse back, and ultimately what path she chose for her life in the end.
There’s no better way to say it than to say that each time Emma’s heart broke, I felt it deep in my bones, and each time she was able to put it back together, I felt that with her too.
This book is a reminder of what true, innocent love can be, while also showing you the struggles you will face when you’re in love. Each of us are faced with choices when we fall in love – we have to decide what to do with our heartbreak and we have to choose how to express that true, feel it in your bones, love – and TJR so skillfully paints such a realistic picture of these actions and emotions.
This book makes me feel nostalgic and reminds me of what love can be and should be at its core.
Anchored Musings 