Named a Best Book of Summer by Cosmopolitan * InStyle * Redbook * Us Weekly * PopSugar * Buzzfeed * Bustle * Brit+Co * Parade “No one does life and love better.” –InStyle “Earth-shaking…you will flip for this epic love story.” –Cosmopolitan “Reid’s heartwrenching tale asks if it’s possible to have multiple soul mates.” —Us WeeklyFrom the author of Maybe in Another Life—named a People Magazine … multiple soul mates.” —Us Weekly
From the author of Maybe in Another Life—named a People Magazine pick—comes a breathtaking new love story about a woman unexpectedly forced to choose between the husband she has long thought dead and the fiancé who has finally brought her back to life.
In her twenties, Emma Blair marries her high school sweetheart, Jesse. They build a life for themselves, far away from the expectations of their parents and the people of their hometown in Massachusetts. They travel the world together, living life to the fullest and seizing every opportunity for adventure.
On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever.
Emma quits her job and moves home in an effort to put her life back together. Years later, now in her thirties, Emma runs into an old friend, Sam, and finds herself falling in love again. When Emma and Sam get engaged, it feels like Emma’s second chance at happiness.
That is, until Jesse is found. He’s alive, and he’s been trying all these years to come home to her. With a husband and a fiancé, Emma has to now figure out who she is and what she wants, while trying to protect the ones she loves.
Who is her one true love? What does it mean to love truly?
Emma knows she has to listen to her heart. She’s just not sure what it’s saying.
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Remember in the movie Castaway when Tom Hanks returns home to find his fiance Helen Hunt is no longer available? That part was always the saddest part of the movie for me. Even sadder than Wilson in my opinion and Wilson’s scene is hard to beat! In One True Loves, author Taylor Jenkins Reid offers a similar scenario but with the focus on the woman left behind instead of the castaway. And let me tell you, the grief, the internal conflict, the timing…it’s all so heart wrenching. So many tears. To have your significant other literally come back from the grave? And you’ve already moved on?
Ms. Reid wrote of an impossible situation for all involved. No one did anything wrong, no one is at fault, but everyone is impacted. Reading this book was an emotional journey and my heart broke over and over before it was slowly put back together. Don’t worry, this book won’t leave you hanging. There is clear closure but not without cost. Maybe it was the connection to the Castaway movie, maybe I needed a good cry, maybe all the stars aligned and perfection happened…I don’t know, but I do know that I loved this book. Check it out
Have you ever wondered how Helen Hunt felt while Tom Hanks was stranded on that island in Cast Away? Taylor Jenkins Reid plays out that scenario in One True Loves, to devastating and heartwarming effect.
Emma Blair married her high school sweetheart, Jesse, got a great job, and was living the dream in California. But then she learns Jesse’s helicopter went down over the Pacific and he’s almost surely dead. Emma grieves, mourns, struggles, returns home to Massachusetts, and slowly begins to move on — accepting an invitation to drinks with a gorgeous man from her past… drinks that lead to love that leads to an engagement. But just as everything’s going perfectly, Emma finds out Jesse survived and is on his way home to her.
This story might feel predictable, but just as she did in Maybe in Another Life, Taylor Jenkins Reid leaves us desperate for more and unsure how the story will play out as Emma struggles with the pull between head and heart, between past and future.
While parts of this story were a bit cheesy, Emma’s grief, guilt, and desperation feel all too real. She’s relatable, memorable, funny, and, while she’s no Evelyn Hugo, TJR succeeds at painting yet another strong heroine.
My favorite thing about this book was how realistic it felt. It’s such a simple, common-place story, but the character development is so real.
People change, often times fundamentally, and some things in our lives cannot be erased or ignored — we have to deal with them. We have to be honest with ourselves about who we are and what we want. At some point, we must realize that, well, this is it now. This is who I am now. This is my life now. And it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
That’s exactly what this book does — it tells us that change can be good, growing up is inevitable, life is going to be painful but also beautiful, and, in the end, everything will be okay.
And love, true love, is perhaps easier than we think.
Taylor Jenkins Reid is one of my read-anything-by author. As soon as I read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo a few years ago, I determined to read through her backlist, and I finally picked this one up over vacation. Reid is just endlessly good, her writing effortless and absorbing no matter what genre she’s writing, and I couldn’t put this one down any more than I could any of her other books. This reminds me most of After I Do – a lovely romantic story.
This is one of those books where you don’t know how you want it to end. You’re torn in two very different directions and it’s so much fun (and a little bit of torture) to watch it play out. Romantic, funny, and sentimental.
An amazing, gripping story!
“I don’t think that true love means your only love. I think true love means loving truly. Loving purely. Loving wholly.”
Taylor Jenkins Reid never lets me down, I absolutely LOVED THIS BOOK! Every time I get in any sort of reading slump I can always count on one of her books to bring me back around. One thing I have noticed about this and all of her books is that she does a brilliant job making you feel emotionally invested in the characters very early on. One True Loves brought me to tears quite a few times. At one point or another throughout the book my heart broke for Emma, Sam, and Jesse in such different ways. I liked that nothing was black and white – it was messy and real. It made me wonder what I would do if I were in this situation and I don’t know if I could come up with a clear answer. At the heart of this book was simply different forms of pure true love and it was such an amazing read.
There are only a couple TJR books left I haven’t read, and I’ve been very reluctant to read them because once I do, I’ll have read everything she’s published, and that makes me sad. However, after quite a few disappointing books recently, I decided it was time to bring in a pro and read something that I KNEW I would like, and as usual, Mrs. Reid got the job done.
This story is absolutely heartbreaking. Taylor nails the devastating grief and anguish of losing your true love to a horrible accident. The months and years that follow where you’re just kind of existing, but not really living. The freedom and guilt of deciding that you’re ready to move on start living your life again. All of it is so incredibly believable and well done. I am NOT a crier, but boy, did this book get me in a few places.
When her husband seemingly comes back from the dead after being gone for over three and a half years, Emma has an impossible decision to make. Pick up the pieces where she and Jesse left off and continue their life together, or move forward with her planned wedding to Sam and continue on with the new life she’s built after overcoming her grief.
I knew who I wanted her to choose, and for a while, I genuinely had no idea which way she was going to go, but I was so happy with how the story ended. It was appropriate and realistic and both happy and sad.
Overall, I absolutely recommend this book, along with any and every other Taylor Jenkins Reid book out there. She really is a gifted storyteller, and I’m so glad I finally got around to reading this.
Actual rating: 4.5 stars!!! I took off that half star off because I was not a huge fan of the audio until about halfway through. Not that it was bad, but this book was so deep and heart wrenching that I wanted more emotion. Lots of people love Julia Whelan and she did grow on me, so I am not sure if that extra half star off is because of the book or because of me.
“I am finishing up dinner with my family and fiancé when my husband calls.”
With an opening line like that you know this story is going to take you on a journey and that it did!! There were so many parts of this story where my heart broke not just for Emma, Jesse and Sam but for everyone involved. I was not expecting this book to make me feel so many emotions and I was not ready for a book this deep, but it made me feel all the feels.
“When you love someone, it seeps out of everything you do, it bleeds into everything you say, it becomes so ever-present, that eventually it becomes ordinary to hear, no matter how extraordinary it is to feel.”
The quotes in this book are exceptional and that is honestly what made the book so good!! They were placed at exactly the right time just when you think you cannot feel anything else Reid pulls you in and rips your heart out once more. To me this is about as good as a book can get.
AND THAT EPILOGUE!! SHEER PERFECTION!!!
Taylor Jenkins Reid is one of the best storytellers, One True Loves was a very entertaining book. Devoured it in one sitting.
Love is many things. Everlasting and ephemeral. Physical and emotional. Complicated and simple. With all these varied facets, is it possible to mix them all together and still arrive at “true” love?
That is the question presented by Ms. Reid in this emotive novel. The three main characters in this novel—Emma Blair, Jesse Lerner, and Sam Kemper—are each put into an impossible situation from the same occurrence. At first, it might seem as though this story is nothing but a contrived and peculiar love triangle. But it is so much more.
I’ve read books where I’ve felt as though I’m living through an experience alongside a character. But there haven’t been many times where I’ve felt the need to pause reading, to literally catch my physical and mental breath. The emotions, and more importantly, how they were conveyed through the author’s words held an authenticity that bordered on frightening. Those feelings of utter loss coupled with intense joy tossed my fragile heart into the air. As it reached a peak, I watched it metaphorically plummet toward the concrete sidewalk below, certain it would shatter into a million tiny pieces.
But at the last second, with a most satisfying message that defines true love in its “truest” form, a pillow appeared beneath me, providing a soft place to land.
True to my initial suspicions, I have become completely enamored with Ms. Reid’s manner of emotive yet authentic storytelling. It has my next planned novel, yet again, being quite predictable.
If you’ve ever loved and lost someone, felt like a wandering soul during that painful journey while learning to love again, or simply identify with every heartbreaking and heartwarming aspect of love, this novel will prove that love is many things.
Complicated and simple. Physical and emotional. Ephemeral at sometimes, everlasting in others.
I read One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid because she had written one of my favorite books of 2020, Daisy Jones and the Six. I didn’t realize it at first, but she also authored one of the best audiobooks I have ever listened to, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. If I did not know the same person had written all three, I never would have guessed. The storylines are incredibly different, but her writing is superb in all of them.
One True Loves opens with teenage Emma Blair questioning her relationships, with her sister, her parents, with books, with her big butt. She is surprised to discover it is possible for her to have a wicked crush when she sees Jesse Lerner for the first time during her freshman year of high school. They don’t end up together then, but by senior year they are a couple, and move across the country together to live the life they’ve both felt unable to live in Massachusetts. Their love is real and true and all-encompassing, and comes to a sudden end when Jesse is lost in a helicopter crash off the coast of Alaska the day before their wedding anniversary.
Emma’s grief is explained, but not a real focus of the story. Instead, it is ruminated on briefly and then the focus becomes whether or not Emma feels ready and able to get back out there. She decides she does, so she goes on a date with a guy from her past, and quite quickly finds herself in love again. Shortly after she and Sam cement their future, she gets a call she never thought would come. Jesse is on the other end of the line, telling her he is alive and coming home.
The rest of the book is devoted to Emma choosing. Choosing between Jesse and Sam, between the old and new versions of herself that she cultivated with two very different men. Jenkins Reid’s writing is sharp, she gets the point across without belaboring it, and while much about the supporting characters does not get beyond the surface level, they still bring meaning to the central character’s story. I knew with certainty which man she should choose shortly after Jesse was back. I liked that the ending wasn’t totally predictable, but went the way I was hoping it would. One True Loves was much different from the other two books I mentioned reading by the author, but it was very good in its own right.
Devoured this in a day!
I didn’t like the ending
This is an old trope revitalized with the wonderful voice the author instills in the main character. I’ve said it before in other reviews of this author’s books: she could write a grocery list and I’d read it. The voice is so natural I just fell into the story and didn’t want to leave the character. What this author also does well is relate to the reader much like Stephen King does. I think this is Reid’s secret, how she is wildly popular. She describes places and events that relate to a wide core of readers. And oddly, in this book her character works at a bookstore but hates to read. What Reid also does so well is give the reader a confidential–almost voyeuristic peek into the intimacy of relationships, how they work, the tenderness, the unbridled love. She does it with just enough details to make the experience real and never overpowers the prose.
The premise of this book has been done before (what premise hasn’t been redone) I remember it best in a Doris Day movie. However, that story worked as a comedy. One True Loves is dramatic. Reid motivates the relationships masterfully and causes such conflict that the reader can’t put the book down. The reader has to find out how the main character is going to extricate herself from this impossible situation. Someone is going to get emotionally crushed. As with Reid’s other books this is a wonderful read and I highly recommend it.
Side note: In one chapter, Reid shifted from first person to a second person point of view (Second person not third, yikes). This was extremely for jarring for me. I didn’t care for it and if it had gone on for more than one chapter I would’ve put the book down.
David Putnam Author of The Bruno Johnson Series.
I’m still crying. So beautiful. Raw. Poignant. A realistic depiction of a situation I hope to never find myself in. This is my fourth TJR book, and she’s proven once again why she’s one of my favorite authors.
By now it’s no secret that I love TJR’s writing. This book was great. The characters were wonderful, the emotion was on point. I definitely recommend for a beach read!
Emma Blair can’t wait to graduate so she can move away from her sister, her parents and their expectations of where her life should go. Jesse Lerner is in the same boat. When Emma and Jesse meet, it’s fireworks and soon their journey towards freedom from life in their small town begins.
Life for Emma & Jesse is fast-paced, chaotic, adventurous and exciting…until one trip changes everything. The helicopter Jesse’s on crashes while flying over the North Pacific, and he is believed to be dead. It takes everything Emma has and everyone who loves her to help her grieve and put her life back together.
Years later, she reunites with Sam Kemper, an old friend from high school, on an impromptu trip to the music store. Soon Emma and Sam are engaged and while she will always love Jesse, she has grieved, healed and is ready to move on. Until life decides to throw a wrench in that plan, and Jesse is found alive and he is coming back home…to her.
Man alive my heart during this book. It’s easy to read this and judge Emma for what she is doing and not doing but no one knows what they would truly do if they were in the same situation. I love this author and the way she writes and reflects the heart. I had tears many times throughout this one. I loved all the characters and the growth they experienced. Sometimes the worst pain can bring about the best change.
A powerful story about growth and love—with such a harrowing premise! I identified with Emma, Sam, and Jesse—they were all so likable, which made Emma’s journey all the more difficult as she navigated her relationship with both men. While the ending wasn’t surprising to me, it certainly was satisfying. I loved how Reid wove this story together. Recommend!
Honestly, TJR is just determined to turn me into an emotional wreck! Every book she writes is so different to the one before it and this was no different. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough and even though I knew who she would pick in the end, I still wanted both options to happen…this was heartbreaking and beautiful all at the same time.