Left me a grief stricken, sobbing mess of a woman.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The blurb
One love. Two people. Twenty Years.
From the moment they met, Erin and Dom loved each other too much, too quickly. Everyone said it wouldn’t last. But they knew differently.
A wedding present, a notebook, brings them together through the good times and the bad. On the blank pages of their love story, they write down everything they can’t always say – the secrets, the heartbreak, the highs and lows. It’s where they see the best and worst of each other.
Falling in love is easy but staying in love is where the story begins…
This is the Book of Love.
The Review
There's that weird moment - when a book has unceremoniously ripped out your heart, stomped on it and left you a grief stricken, sobbing mess of a woman... yes that moment, when you just have to tell everyone HOW GOOD THIS BOOK IS. Because it made me cry big fat, puddle inducing tears, while my poor, baffled husband held me as I wept, "Stuuuuuuuupid Booook". Because I want to go back to a time before I had read this book, so I can read it all over again and subject myself to the beautiful pain/pleasure of this poignant story.
What I loved most about this book is how authentic Erin and Dom's relationship is. It's imperfectly perfect. They both make mistakes, sometimes really, really big ones. They both have to learn to forgive and wait to be forgiven. The Book of love, gifted to them by Erin's Dad, becomes the perfect mechanism for them to really be open with each other, when talking face to face just doesn't seem possible. The letters they write to each other in the book are wonderful insights into the workings of a real marriage - it's messy, but its enduring.
The characters in this book are beautifully crafted. Erin is a bundle of anxiety, struggling to balance her mental health with a busy and sometimes difficult life. I really identified with her as a character, especially her dislike of surprises, which is one of my all time anxiety triggers! (Which no one seems to quite understand - but this book and this character captured it perfectly). But every one of these characters felt genuine - not a single one felt like they had been put there just to serve a narrative purpose, but each had their own subtle, nuanced stories to tell.
Erin and Dom's story is told in alternating timelines - between 'then' and 'now', over 20 years, with both of them taking turns in narrating. Slowly their love story unravels as we build to a beautiful yet painful conclusion.
This book has an utterly exceptional twist. To say more would be wholly unfair to your experience of getting to read it unspoilt. But it's done with such finesse and subtlety that it will leave you scratching your head. And it's not contrived (in fact nothing about this books is). I have read too many books with a twist just done for effect, but the fact that 'The Book of Love' is not marketed on this basis tells you all you need to know. And this moment in the book is what was my undoing and ultimately led me to become a soggy, tearful mess. Any book that has the power to do that deserves a lot of respect.
What a beautiful, poignant, uplifting and gut-wrenching read. What a dichotomy of a book. I feel such a sense of loss, but also an uplifting sense of enduring love.
This was the February selection, as part of the 'My Book Moment' book and gift subscription boxes. I am not affiliated with them in any way and the subscription was a present to myself!
Find out more about My Book Moment here.