Book Review: Always Something There to Remind Me by Beth Harbison

Salam, next book review. Well this book is not one of my favorite genre but the story line captivate my fragile heart 

Can you ever really know if love is true? And if it is, should you stop at anything to get it? Two decades ago, Erin Edwards was sure she’d already found the love of her life: Nate Lawson. Her first love. The one with whom she shared everything--dreams of the future, of children, plans for forever. The one she thought she would spend the rest of her life with. Until one terrible night when Erin made a mistake Nate could not forgive and left her to mourn the relationship she could never forget or get over.Today, Erin is contentedly involved with a phenomenal guy, maneuvering a successful and exciting career, and raising a great daughter all on her own. So why would the name “Nate Lawson” be the first thing to enter her mind when her boyfriend asks her to marry him?In the wake of the proposal, Erin finds herself coming unraveled over the past, and the love she never forgot. The more she tries to ignore it and move on, the more it haunts her.Always Something There to Remind Me is a story that will resonate with any woman who has ever thought of that one first love and wondered, “Where is he?” and “What if…?” Filled with Beth Harbison’s trademark nostalgia humor and heart, it will transport you, and inspire you to believe in the power of first love.

 I have to agree to Jen Lancaster that this book is really "Riveting, touching, truthful, profoundly satisfying." Well before posting my own thought for this book maybe you can hear this woman's first well i'm not so good at describing 18+ like this.

I don't think I'll be posting this particular review on Facebook as this book has quite a bit of *whispers* s-e-x in it. (A lot of Christians seem to have a problem with this particular topic even though God created it.) However, before Christians discount it completely, let me just add that this book makes a powerful case for teenage abstinence. First of all, it contains an extremely accurate description of a girl's First Time. It's not the passionate, beautiful experience you see in movies. It's awkward and painful and not much fun, especially when it's with someone you aren't madly in love with and not married to.
The second reason I think there is a message of abstinence here is that in this book you see a woman still hung up over her first love decades later. What girls don't realize is that when you give your heart and body to someone, they will always have a piece of you. Shouldn't that be the person you're going to spend the rest of your life with? I actually think that this wouldn't be a bad book to remember when it's time to give your daughter The Talk. There's more at stake than just unplanned pregnancies or STDs. -Regina from GoodRead

Just a note: In real life, most stories don't end like this one. That's the difference between fiction and reality

so enough with heavy let's start buddies! I am so overwhelmed by this book, I am not even sure where to start this review. I don't think that I have ever been as personally affected mentally and emotionally by a book as this one has affected me and I am not even sure if I can pinpoint the exact reason as to why. This is DEFINITELY a story that resonates close to my heart. The book jumps constantly from the Present and back to the mid 1980's when Erin was in high school and deeply in love with Nate... like only teen love can be. Much of the lure of this book throughout the first half of the book is that you are told way early that Erin & Nate have not been together in 23 years. The details of their relationship are slowly revealed, and the deeper you read into their relationship, the more the questions press about what in the world happened to keep them apart for the last 23 years. At the same time, you are learning about Erin's life now with her wonderful 15 yo daughter Camille, her really incredible boyfriend Rick who wants to marry her, and his 16 yo daughter Amy who is Cam's best friend.

What is obvious throughout the entire story is, that no matter how young they were, Nate & Erin had an incredible love and the end of that relationship and the pain from that ending has never left Erin. That pain is a palpable entity throughout the entire book. It echoes. It resonates. It hurts me, as the reader, even now to think about it. She was absolutely devastated by the loss of Nate no matter what her actions were that brought on the break-up. That single loss defined her whole life. She never again had another true love, but was it true love or simply the teenage high-emotion definition of true love?

There is also a lot of discussion about fate in this book. What if Nate & Erin had never broken up? What if she had made a single different choice in high school? There are so many what if's? But the one thing that is clear throughout this book is that if she hadn't made the choices that she had, then she wouldn't have had Camille and that is not a choice that she EVER would have made. Camille is her life and in the end Camille is her savior in helping her make the right move. There was a certain rightness to that which was so perfect for the ending in this book. maybe it's the way I sort of wanted it to work out but didn't see how the author could manage it without coming off completely cheesy, and then she got the ending just right... 

Erin finds Nate, and discovers some shocking news of her own. Will it be too much for her to take, and make her realize that the break-up was exactly that - something that was meant to be long ago? Or is fate stepping in once again, and letting her know that the time is right for a do-over, and this is the second chance she'd always hoped for?

It questions whether one can ever get over their first love and intertwines the tale of Erin (the novel's protagonist) during her teen years with that of her during her adult life. These were wonderfully woven together often leading into and out of each other so that the reader never really felt as if they were departing from the story. Unfortunately, this is a technique that many writers have not yet mastered and can result in the loss of the 'flow' of the story. 

Throughout the novel Erin questions the effect that the loss of her first love Nate had on her and whether she could have, or should have, tried to change that. 

A beautiful ending which had me almost begging for more, a must read for any chick-lit lovers. I loved this one unreasonably, and recommend it to everyone who has ever angsted or felt the pull of the past. Or anyone who has ever liked to read, really. It's a book about first love and all of the agony and ecstasy that goes with it. In this story, the author delves into deeper stuff than she's ever done before, and shows her readers what she can really do with words. 

Well if you are new in Chick-Lit genre .. hmm i don't recommend it so much dear lalallaalala. thought i'm becoming a woman right now haha. i really like to maintain being a girl forever tho..

Quotes:
-“Who they are today isn't who they were then.” -“I missed the idea of him more than he himself.” -“We can understand the science of what makes a heart beat, but we can never stop it from breaking.” “I wanted to tell him I loved him, that I'd always loved him, & that life-& I- had never been the same without him there.” -“This had to be what insanity felt like. Thinking the same thoughts over and over, expecting a different reality every time.” 

until then, XOXO