Thursday 27 August 2015

Review: Jennifer Weiner's "Who Do You Love."

Review: Jennifer Weiner's "Who Do You Love." 


Synopsis:

Rachel Blum and Andy Landis are eight years old when they meet late one night in an ER waiting room. Born with a congenital heart defect, Rachel is a veteran of hospitals, and she's intrigued by the boy who shows up all alone with a broken arm. He tells her his name. She tells him a story. After Andy's taken back to the emergency room and Rachel's sent back to her bed, they think they'll never see each other again.

Rachel, the beloved, popular, and protected daughter of two doting parents, grows up wanting for nothing in a fancy Florida suburb. Andy grows up poor in Philadelphia with a single mom and a rare talent that will let him become one of the best runners of his generation.

Over the course of three decades, through high school and college, marriages and divorces, from the pinnacles of victory and the heartbreak of defeat, Andy and Rachel will find each other again and again, until they are finally given a chance to decide whether love can surmount difference and distance and if they've been running toward each other all along.

With honesty, wit, and clear-eyed observations about men and women, love and fate, and the truth about happy endings, Jennifer Weiner delivers two of her most memorable characters, and a love story you'll never forget. 

Review-Jo

"Who do you Love" first attracted my attention after seeing it on social media. I loved the cover, people were saying great things about it and it sounded like a book that I needed to read. Rachel and Andy's story took me on a journey that lasted thirty years. Thirty years of love and friendship between the couple. Beginning in the eighties when Rachel and Andy first met and finishing in the present day, their story captured me immediately and I found myself quickly eating up the pages, fully engrossed in what I was reading. 

He'd been lonely, and I'd been lonely, but if we were together, 
we'd never have to be lonely again.

Rachel and Andy both had crappy childhoods, but for two very different reasons. It was during this time that the pair first met. My heart went out to both Rachel and Andy but it was Andy's story that truly broke my heart. I could have cried for the awful childhood that he was given. The story then continued as both children grew up, sometimes they were together, sometimes the couple were apart. Rachel and Andy's lives were like most, full of ups and downs, missed opportunities and chances that were taken. If you took away Rachel's heart problem and Andy's success in running, the remainder of their lives were unremarkable, therefore I found Rachel and Andy's story to be realistic and easy to relate to. It was a story that truly resonated with me. A life that anyone of us could live. 

Did any love ever feel as sweet as first love? Were we all just damaged goods now, 
battered cans in the grocery-store sale bin, day old bread, marked down at the register, 
hoping that someone would look past the obvious flaws and love us enough to take us home.

Rachel and Andy's love for each other was a first love and like many first loves, it never really went away. It was a forever love and throughout the story this was proven time and time again, right up to the final few pages, which brings me to the ending of the story. I was so disappointed with how this book finished up. I loved being wrapped up in Rachel and Andy's story. At times I felt as though I was in time machine, travelling through the decades and reliving the stand out moments and the fashions from each era. Rachel and Andy's story was one that kept me turning the pages eager to discover how their lives would play out so when their story was brought to an end so abruptly, it made me a little angry and upset. I was not ready for the couple's journey to be over. I was gutted with how it finished all too soon and there wasn't even an epilogue to ease my sadness.

"You always had my heart." 

Despite the disappointing ending, I still enjoyed "Who Do You Love" so it gets ❤️❤️❤️❤️

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