Taylor Jenkins Reid - Forever, Interrupted

 

Taylor Jenkins Reid - Forever, Interrupted

4⭐

Genre: Romance, Fiction, Contemporary Romance

Pages: 328

Format: Paperback

Publisher:  Simon & Schuster UK 

Date Published: 5th January 2023

 

Book Blurb: 

This heartrending debut novel weaves a beautiful love story with an homage to the redemptive power of female friendship.Elsie and Ben are average twenty-somethings, but this is not your average love story. It begins bright and promising: the newlywed couple is head over heels in love, having eloped six months after they met. But it all shatters in an instant; Ben out riding his bike, is hit by a truck—and dies on impact.


Elsie hears the sirens outside her apartment, but by the time she gets downstairs, his body has already been taken to the hospital. When she arrives, Elsie is greeted by an unexpected visitor—her mother-in-law, Susan, whom she has never met and who doesn’t even know she exists.


Both are seared with grief; Susan is still mourning the death of her own husband several years earlier, and the loss of her only son is almost too much to bear. The two women immediately sour on one another, fighting over what to do with Ben’s belongings and how to fulfill his wishes. But as time goes by, Susan and Elsie both realize that despite the terrible accident that brought them together, they are now the only family they have left.


Interweaving Elsie and Ben’s charmed romance with Elsie and Susan’s healing process, Forever, Interrupted will make you laugh, make you cry, and remind you that there’s more than one way to live happily ever after.

My Review: 

This is the very first TJR book, that also explores some very heavy topics, however, I still loved her writing and the way she made all the characters feel so real, 3 dimensional, humanly flawed, yet so relatable. I loved how TJR explored the raw truths of grief and losing someone you love. Although the love story itself felt a tiny bit unrealistic, I did enjoy the instant connection that Elsie and Ben had.

The story follows Elsie, whose husband Ben died just nine days after they got married. They only knew each other for 6 months and Ben never told his mum about Elsie. However, Elsie meets her mother-in-law in the hospital to which Ben was taken after his accident and both are surprised, lost and angry at each other. After Ben's funeral, we see both Elsie and Bens’s mum grieving, and healing, whilst learning more about each other and Ben.

I think the main message of this book for me was how different people deal with grief, and whether it is alright to grieve someone even if you only knew them for a little while. Also, the book explores whether you can truly fall in love with someone in such a short time as Elsie did with Ben. However, for me what I loved about this book is how imperfect each of the characters is and at the same time how their actions are so relatable and human.

Overall: It is not an easy book to read but it honestly made me laugh and cry and it was so relatable. I loved TJRs writing and making characters so 3 dimensional, so imperfect, so flawless and yet so human. 

About the Author:

Taylor Jenkins Reid is the New York Times bestselling author of Carrie Soto Is Back, Malibu Rising, Daisy Jones & The Six, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, as well as four other novels. She lives in Los Angeles.

https://taylorjenkinsreid.com/