If Only I Had Told Her by Laura Nowlin, 2024
My anticipation for reading this book began the moment I finished its prequel If He Had Been With Me around 6 months ago. I let the purchase of this book be the highlight of my week—was hyped about it for DAYS. I made a tiktok about my trip to Barnes&Noble because my excitement was that pulpable, and I let myself enjoy a nice chocolate bar with a hot tea latte to begin. Started off strong. Didn’t end that way.
The book is split up into three parts – Finny, Jack, and Autumn – and, as we’re given Finny’s voice to start, we’re pulled right into the same story which I had been looking forward to (the continued story of If He Had Been With Me). However, (and maybe this is a hot take because all over booktok I see readers praising this book, some even claiming it’s better than the first) once we lost Finny’s POV, we lose the feeling we’re reading the same story. That’s I think the lack.
I’M SORRY I’M SORRY, OKAY??
So, anyway, we start with Finny. I was happy with where Finny’s perspective picks up, which is just a few days before his death, at around the last fourth of Autumn’s POV in the previous book. I was definitely most excited about his perspective; actually I thought the entire book would be his perspective, but if Nowlin had only retold the entire story through Finny’s POV, it would have felt like reading the first book a second time since both characters feel the exact same thing for one another. Some fans would have still fallen for this of course – probably me too, to be honest – but it would have left me with an undermining thought about how that approach was a lazy one to take.
Where Finny’s POV picks up, we’re at the climax of the last novel. Their mothers (best friends, if you recall from my review of the previous book) are away and Finny’s girlfriend is returning tomorrow after being in Europe all Summer. Before her return, Finny has asked Autumn if he can read the novel she’s finished writing. What’s nice about Finny’s perspective of these few days is that it’s detailed enough that it takes up approximately ⅓ of the book, so we get more out of those two days than we did in the first book.
This first part, I’ll tell ya, was sad. I mean, it was happy as hell—Finny and Autumn are finally admitting the years and years of pent up love they’ve had for each other—but readers are hyper emotional during this first part because we know Finny’s about to die. This worked well, as it’s true many of us sad girlies picked up this sequel because of the emotional catapult the first book brought us on. What’s maybe the coolest part about this (and definitely did satisfy my need to know all the tea) is that we now get the details of the car ride scene which ends Finny’s life. It’s the break up between Finny and his 4-year girlfriend Sylvie (since, you know, he had a girlfriend for 4 years despite his being in love with Autumn, and then he cheats on his girlfriend the night before he dies). Since, obviously, Autumn isn’t there for it, we don’t know what the last few seconds of Finny’s life were actually like in the first book. Here, we see that Sylvie was essentially yelling at him (as she should!!) and threatening to get out of the car, which made him speed up and skid in the rain.
My critique of this scene is this: as we’re reading now the specifics of this break-up between Sylvie and Finny, we know that he is telling her he is still in love with her. It sounds quite simple to a reader who’s never been in a situation like this—he’s just also in love with Autumn, and he’s choosing Autumn being that they’re soulmates and he’ll always be in love with Autumn. Yes. Checks out. I’m not one to say you can’t love two people at once; however, I think this is a very complex situation, and the complexity behind loving two people at once and making a decision to let one go should not seem so easy. I almost don’t believe Finny when he’s saying he still loves her, because we just came from his perspective with Autumn, and, there, he doesn’t have a single doubt in his mind about her! I guess I’m not in Finny’s head, but in actuality it would seem if he loved them both, he’d have doubts about both, as well as desires for both, and his choice would essentially land on the one he thinks he has less doubts about, but he wouldn’t be so sure either way!
Also, why is he saying that to her!? Come ON Finny; don’t we know that’s a false thread of hope which is gonna linger and keep the poor girl holding on. Like, geez, even our perfectly manufactured book boyfriends know how to manipulate us, huh?
Despite my complaints here, I do realize that if Nowlin had delved into this bit further, it would have easily overwhelmed the sweet, all-or-nothing Autumn and Finny romance, so I understand why she didn’t. BUT if this were a more highly shrewd piece of literary fiction per se, I would like to have seen Finny have a heavy inner conflict in choosing Autumn.
Also, and here may be a BIG hot take, but that car break-up/death scene was what I most expected (and wanted) to empty my tear ducts for, but I…didn’t cry? It just wasn’t very sad?? It felt disconnected, like the characters were arguing over the relationship of a novel they were reading or something, but not their own. Sylvie is getting her heart torn out of her—being told essentially that her long term boyfriend has been in love with his best friend THE ENTIRE TIME—yet I didn’t feel any real passion from either of them.
Jack’s part, on the other hand, did make me cry. Finny’s POV ends sort of abruptly since, well, he dies, and then we immediately get his best friend Jack’s perspective. I admit, at first this felt sort of random—I don’t recall Jack being a big part of If He Had Been With Me, so I worried I wouldn’t be invested in it. But I think in the end Jack’s part ended up being my favorite of the three.
He deals with the grief of losing his best friend in such a real way. There’s a scene where he’s at a high school party, looking at a bunch of his peers and thinking they’re all going to die one day—a very sad but relatable morbid introspection. He also repeats on multiple occasions Finny is dead, which is obvious to us but to Jack, the best friend, the magnitude of the situation is too much to feel at once. Jack’s part explores the way the death of someone close to you often forces you to finally understand death, and I think that’s a very real experience many of us have when experiencing grief for the first time.
He also deals with life moving on after Finny’s death, which, yes, happens, but is often an unbelievable prospect to those involved. Life goes on as planned for Jack; he moves out and into the college dormitory he and Finny planned to be roommates in. Now that that’s no longer the case, Jack must adjust to life, generally, after Finny’s death, as well as to a new idea of college since Finny can no longer be a part of his experience of it. One of my favorite additions to Jack’s part also is his slow-starting friendship with his new roommate, who seems uninterested in him until one day he admits he lost his brother when he was younger and having Jack as a roommate reminds him of when he and his brother shared a room. This is a very small part but it’s sweet that in the midst of feeling incredibly isolated without his best friend, he finds someone who understands.
Autumn’s part (part 3) is where we lose some points. I had more sympathy for Autumn during her few appearances in Jack’s part than in her own. We leave off in If He Had Been With Me with Autumn having found out she’s pregnant after being hospitalized for a suicide attempt. We pick up in If Only I Had Told Her a month later, in a point of view which feels as though she is consistently failing to accept that he’s gone. Don’t get me wrong, I can not IMAGINE the shocking pain she is going through; in fact, I can’t say if I were in her position I would ever accept Finny’s death. But in terms of the plot, it felt like moving backwards, coming from Jack’s part (where he is beginning to accept the unfortunate reality of how things are) to a part where Autumn is still very bitter. Like Finny’s predicament of loving two people at once, a tragedy like this is something which requires very complex understandings; I think, again, if this were maybe a novel of more high quality literary fiction, it could have been written a lot more evocatively, and Autumn’s inability to move on could be read as more of an intentional writing decision than a lack of care in her characterization.
Also, she is pregnant with his child, and of course that shouldn’t mean she’s ecstatic despite the tragedy which just occurred. In fact, it’s a very real thing for a pregnant woman to not feel very excited even without having just lost the baby’s father, but I don’t feel as though her depression is addressed directly. Since her prenatal depression is not mentioned, it feels as if we are just missing the parts where she seems excited. She says, at one point, that if Finny were alive she’s not sure she’d have the baby. What do we feel about this? Yes, this is probably an accurate emotion in her circumstance, but it seemed ungrateful, no? I would be thanking G*d every day if I lost someone I loved but had the chance to grow his baby inside me. I hope once the wound of Finny’s death heals slightly (as I imagine it will), the baby isn’t born to a mother who holds some resentment for having her before she was ready.
Another hot take, but I also think Autumn is IMMENSELY wrong in how she handles the Sylvie situation. In fact – and I’m pretty sure this is the opposite of what Laura Nowlin was aiming for, which is why it doesn’t fit – I’m finding I prefer Sylvie in this book over Autumn. Sylvie and Autumn both essentially lost the same person—he was BOTH of their boyfriends. And yes, we know Autumn’s side of it well and we ship Finny with Autumn over Sylvie still (for Finny’s sake), but that does not change the fact that Sylvie was still so, so wronged by them!
Consider this: Your boyfriend was in love with his neighbor/best friend the entire time you were with him, persistently told you she was nothing to worry about, and then after going on a trip for the Summer on your therapist’s recommendation, he spends every minute with her, and lies about it every day, then CHEATS ON you, and then DIES before you can even process his betrayal. OH, and then the girl who he told you not to worry about is PREGNANT WITH HIS BABY.
After all that, after all the love and trust she gave Finny, it’s Autumn who gets to raise his child.
I can not imagine. I simply can not imagine. This actually enrages me.
Yet it’s Sylvie who repeatedly checks in on Autumn’s well-being via Jack and even Finny’s father. She tells Angie (Autumn’s best friend) to congratulate Autumn for her on the baby, and when Angie relays the message she says Sylvie seemed genuine. Like DAMN she’s a better person than I am.
Autumn, on the other hand, avoids Sylvie at Finny’s funeral and in the smoothie shop they end up at at the same time. Like, come on Autumn be so for real right now and face the girl who’s life you ruined to at least say SORRY; and if you can’t do that, can you at least try to give her at least a slight sense of solidarity! The poor girl who just lost the boy she loves; Autumn is the only person who would understand.
The only piece of Autumn’s part which I enjoyed was when she met Finny’s father. I liked his regret for not having been in Finny’s life, and I liked the small noticings she makes of his facial features and how if Finny were alive, that is what he’d look like.
Overall, I give this a 3 out of 5 stars because it didn’t feel authentic to the first book’s storyline, and really, I didn’t think it was that sad. The title If Only I Had Told Her implies that this is a story from Finny’s perspective. I would have been happy if the bulk of the novel was the very drawn out last two days of Finny’s life. Of course I’m no writer and I can’t imagine I could have written this sequel any better, but I would have written it to entail only Finny and Jack’s perspective; both much longer, with possibly a new romance between Jack and Autumn (without undermining how much she misses Finny) so Autumn could continue to be a large part in the novel and heal via Jack’s perspective. AND AUTUMN WOULD DEFINITELY FACE SYLVIE!! That’s a big one for me. I would have cut Autumn’s part altogether, since truly it became a book about motherhood more than romance or grief, and for such an emotional book, I don’t believe I cried during Autumn’s part at all.
Going over my choice of quotes below, I think I would even change my rating to a 2 out of 5. Is that awful? I don’t feel the usual umph I get when I read over my quotes. Very mid.
Okay, final rating: 2.5/5.
Trigger Warnings: Young death, suicidal thoughts, teen pregnancy
Quotes:
I’ll love her even if she turns out to be cruel. That’s my curse.
I strain to listen. Outside, birds are singing. The sky is clear after the rain.
There’s got to be a way I can think this into not being true.
It feels like our mourning is all she has left of Finn. Our grief is proof of his life.
Autumn sits on a stool next to his coffin, resting her cheek on its lid like it’s his shoulder.
It would be so easy to save Finn’s life if it weren’t for time and space.
I’m torturing myself, obsessing like this. Part of me doesn’t want to get better though. What will I have left of Finn when the hurt is gone?
I still know Finn so well. Someday I won’t know him like this. I’m losing a bit of him each and every moment. Time is changing me.
Not wanting to be dead isn’t quite the same as wanting to be alive.
It’s like suddenly being asked to choose a religion when it never occurred to me there may be a God.
I have the dress as a talisman more than anything, proof that I am an adult woman, more or less. Even if I don’t have Finny to tell me I look beautiful, I can tell myself for him.
