If He Had Been With Me by Laura Nowlin

Finn and Autumn were the best of friends until middle school. That’s when they seemed to grow apart. Finn was with the popular crowd and Autumn was with the not-so-popular crowd. Their moms were still friends and they were still neighbors, so they saw each other most days. Autumn has Jaime now and they have been going out for practically forever. So what if she feels a pang in her chest when she looks at Finn. She’s happy with her new friends and her new life…right?

Love this book. This will most likely be my favorite for the year. Laura Nowling just gets it. Everything is just completely brilliant in this novel. The characters are totally great and the story is heartbreaking and just so honest. “I want to savour this wonder, this happening of loving a book and reading it for the first time, because the first time is always the best, and I will never read this book for the first time ever again.” She also totally gets being a reader. It always draws me into the book when the character is a big reader too.

Finn and Autumn were the best characters. I always wanted a friend like Finn. I wanted that kind of easy friendship where the line between two people is blurred. It was devastating to me to see them not together. I could feel the pull in Autumn’s chest each time she saw Finn. Even though she was happy with her other friends and Jaime, she wasn’t as happy as she could be. Her heart still wanted more. It crazy how such a small little thing could drive people apart without them even realizing why. A simple miscommunication and two lives are left incomplete. It’s awful, but I’m sure it happens all the time.

Jaime was an okay character. I think I loved Finn too much to really give Jaime a chance. It seemed a little bit mean at times, but nothing too bad. He just wasn’t a good fit for Autumn’s eccentricity. Their little group seemed to function like any group of friends and they all seemed to work okay together.

The only bit that I wasn’t crazy about is when we read Autumn’s story that she wrote. She was supposedly this really wonderful author, but the story was fairly juvenile. It wasn’t bad it was just kind of basic and plain.

This book is everything I want my realistic fiction to be. Just beautiful and honest. I knew how it was going to end early one, you kind of know from the first few pages. Regardless, you are still wishing and hoping that the outcome isn’t what it seems to be. It was awful in a good way–in a I don’t ever want this book to end kind of way. It made me laugh, it made me bawl my eyes out, it made my chest hurt and it made me close the book and immediately want to pick it up and start from the very beginning. It made me feel everything as if it was my own story.

First Line:
“I wasn’t with Finny on that August night, but my imagination has burned the scene in my mind so that it feels like a memory.”

Favorite Lines:
“No one is perfect.”

“‘I think we’re supposed to experience as much beauty as we can.'”

“The icy wind burns through my gloves and my fingers ache until they fall numb and silent.”

“I can feel them in my mouth like three smooth pebbles.”

Muy buena historia

This was an easy read for me, it felt like I read it faster than other books. It is beautiful writing, I don’t know what it was but I couldn’t really connect to the characters, that took me a longer time than I would have hoped. But I’m very excited for the second book. I also thought that the fact that Autumn’s mom struggles with her mental health very important to read.

4-4.5 stars for me….

You ever read a book where you knew you were going to be left brokenhearted, but you kept going anyway? Yep, this book is one of them. From the moment I started the first chapter until the very end, I knew I was in for a wild ride, a train wreck even, but the anticipation kept me going, even hoping for a different outcome. I love angst-filled tortured lovers type book…it’s what I seek for…I don’t always care for the cheesy fluffy HEA…the more a book makes my chest ache, the better. So why the 4 star rating?

I’ll start off with the good: I’m a fan of single POV books. I love the mystery of only having one side of the story and having to guess what the other is feeling. I loved the overall storyline and I thought the author did a fantastic job capturing the realness of what teenagers go through in high school from experiencing your first love, first heartbreak, the cliques and friendships that you form along the way. It didn’t feel cheesy as I find with most YA books, and I think a lot of that had to do with the writing style which can be choppy and short at times, but concise and to the point. For this book, I thought that type of writing style worked. I hate YA books with over the top cattiness, cliche lines, or drawn out sentences. I didn’t find myself rolling my eyes at all, as I do with most YA books, and I think that had to do the main character Autumn – she was relatable and likable. Yes she was awkward, but weren’t we all in high school, trying to stand out or be different, trying to find ourselves?

Having said all that: The story did start off slow and at times, I wasn’t even sure if Finn would become a major part of the story. Autumn and Finn had many encounters sprinkled throughout the first half of the book, but their interaction left me wanting more…more angst, more longing looks, just more. At times, it felt like their encounters were so brief that you weren’t sure if it meant anything. There were lots of times when they would sit on the couch and watch TV, and then the very next paragraph it would suddenly jump into something else. I wish the author would have followed up their interaction/encounter with a longing stare, a subtle touch, maybe an awkward conversation. Also, although I liked the choppy sentences, I felt at times the story jumped around too often with no transition/explanations in between events.

Overall though, it was still a great read…one that took me out of a reading slump after back to back DNF. If you love the rip your heart out kind of books, this one won’t disappoint!