Throughout this entire book I just kept wondering what I would do if, God forbid, I found myself in Emma’s situation.  Taylor Jenkins Reid’s strength definitely lies in her ability to write about human emotions.  She creates her characters to experience life in a realistic manner.  Life isn’t always pretty, and neither is our response to what life throws our way, but she allows her characters to feel and experience it the way real people would.  It’s this ability that makes her words, characters, and stories so meaningful.

I’m not the type of reader who shies away from a love triangle, but this book has one of the most heart-wrenching love triangles I have ever read.  Falling deeply and madly in love with someone who returns that love to you has to be one of the most gratifying and fulfilling feelings ever.  Believing that you’ve found that special person to spend the rest of your life with, your soul mate, is what most people long for.  Emma had found her soul mate in Jesse, her one true love.  They had their whole lives ahead of them to experience adventures and to be blissfully happy, until they didn’t.

Emma’s heartache and grief was palpable.  They were more than merely words on a page, they were the heartbreaking emotions that anyone would go through under those tragic circumstances.  I kept putting myself in her shoes, thinking that her feelings and actions were completely normal.  How would I react to the news that my husband was dead?  How would I carry on with my life, alone?  Would I even want to carry on?

Emma found the strength to carry on. She let go of the weight of her grief, she accepted her reality, and  began to live her life again.  It wasn’t easy, it was heartfelt and messy, but it was realistic. Living her life didn’t mean that she forgot Jesse or her profound love for him.  He was always an important part of her life and who she was as a person.  I wanted her to be able to find happiness again.  She deserved to have a good life.  She deserved to find love again with a good man who would love her back just as hard…and she did find that love, with Sam.

Jesse and Sam.  How could one girl be so lucky (in a way) to find two great guys to fall in love with?  Jesse or Sam?  She loved them both.  How could she possibly choose one over the other?  How could she avoid breaking one of their hearts?  How could she avoid breaking her own?  Here’s the problem, they are both good guys.  They both love Emma and want to spend the rest of their lives with her.  Gah!  My emotions were running rampant.  There was no easy choice.  There wasn’t even a right or a wrong choice.  And to be completely truthful, I would’ve been completely satisfied with whatever choice she had made, and I would’ve been equally as heartbroken.

One True Loves certainly put my emotions through the wringer, just like I knew it would.  Brimming with honest, realistic, true to life feelings, Taylor Jenkins Reid captures the pure essence of what it is like to experience love, loss, and to be loved.  This is a beautiful love story that is as heartbreaking as it is hopeful.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and give my husband a big hug.

*5 Stars

 

    2 Book Lovers Reviews

Please feel free to comment or share

See more of Shelley's Contemporary Romance