One True Loves, Taylor Jenkins Reid, 2016
Taylor Jenkins Reid is the perfect romance writer for those looking for something with a bit more style than your typical commercial romance, but with less density than literary fiction. One True Loves is a book with a purpose.
Emma, while in high school, falls in love with the captain of the swim team, Jesse, after crushing on him for years. She and her older sister work at their parents’ small town bookshop in Acton, Massachusetts, where she is anticipated to stay at and run. Jesse represents thrill and adventure, and in her life with him she finds a career as a travel writer and moves to LA where Jesse works in wildlife photography. They have a very rare kind of first-love that lasts, though she is finding herself missing home and feeling strung out on all the adventure on travel. Reid is a master at writing the small town vibe, by the way—even we begin missing high school and Acton, Massachusetts.
On the day before their one year anniversary trip, Emma’s world is flipped upside down when Jesse’s helicopter crashes in the pacific ocean. Although the bodies of his mates are found, Jesse’s never is.
In her grief, Emma moves back to Massachusetts. She takes over the bookstore, forgoing her life of adventure without Jesse. She serendipitously runs into an old high school friend, Sam. On meeting Sam, she immediately feels like herself again and runs into a beautiful resolution on her grief, that although she will always love Jesse, she must let him stay in her past. Sam makes it easy for her, never once making her choose who she loves more. Emma finds that she enjoys running her parents’ bookstore, and she loves Acton, Massachusetts, and although Jesse was her one true love in high school and young adulthood, at thirty-one there is no one more perfect for her than Sam. They are soon engaged.
It is three and a half years after Jesse’s helicopter crash that she gets the call that he has been rescued, surviving on an isle and swimming the open sea. She is faced with the decision to either pick up where she left off as Jesse’s wife, or continue her perfect small town life with Sam.
The novel’s purpose is so wildly clear, it changes a reader’s perspective on their own past loves. Spoilers onward. Emma chooses Sam. But Reid does this smartly. When Emma is with Sam, Emma thinks there is no one she loves like Sam, but when Emma is with Jesse, Emma thinks there is no one she loves like Jesse. It’s a real issue of object permanence that is common to a lot of us, and dare I say the reason people are often fed false hope and led on.
Sam, chivalrous and perfect Sam, tells her that he has to leave her. I think he is absolutely right in doing so. He says “I have to let you go and I have to hope you come back to me” (p.187). This way, she can give Jesse some real time, and decide if it’s right for her.
Emma is convinced she’s in love with Jesse. There are moments when she thinks even Sam can’t compare. But Reid is careful in doing this; in Emma’s dynamic with Jesse, Reid tends to emphasize flirtiness and physical chemistry whereas with Sam she emphasizes alignment and mutual care.
The issue, mainly, is that the grief of losing Jesse is what changed Emma. She has become a person who sees the past as a jumping off point, or a point of reference. She is excited for her future with Sam. Jesse, on the other hand, keeps calling her by his last name and repeatedly references things about her that she no longer identifies with. And maybe more incriminating is that he is not able to communicate with her all that happened to him while at sea. Where she and Sam have a healthy relationship built on communication and trust, she and Jesse are with each other only four days and what they do best is drink, have sex, and reminisce about the past.
In the novel’s conclusion Emma comes up with a really groundbreaking point about why things could never work with Jesse. She says “We are two people who are madly in love with our old selves. And that is not the same as being in love” (p.273).
There are a few points the novel excels at, one of which being the message of love still being love even after it’s over (or, in other words, love can be true while also moved on from), and the other being the way the story really focuses on choosing yourself over choosing a man. If Emma ended up with neither Jesse nor Sam, it would still be a great novel because she has accepted that she is allowed to change, and she is allowed to disappoint someone who she no longer feels connected to in the way he’d like her to.
5/5 because this is a quick and easy read with depth and beautiful prose. The book has everything. Self-love, romance, moving on, moving forward.
