If He Had Been with Me

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."

my friend recommended me this book, and at that time i was in the middle of reading icebreaker (dont ask🌚) so i kind of forgot that she recommended it. and once i finished icebreaker i decided i should give this book a try. THANK EVERYTHING I DID. normally im a slow reader (icebreaker is 400 pages and it took me 5 months to read), but this book is around 400 pages and i kid you not, it took me 2-3 weeks to finish. im sure if i sat down with no distractions i could read it in a day with how good it was. theres moments of chemistry between the 2 characters that for some time of the book is super rare and its so good. the book also makes me feel a certain way when i read it and i love it. would recommend!!

This is the first book of 2024 that I have given five stars. I honestly don’t know where to start with my review. This was a gripping, devastating, and all-encompassing book.

While it did start off slow, by the middle of the book I was captured with the writing. By the end of the book, I was in love with the characters.

I honestly do not have enough words to express how deeply this story has touched me. I loved everything about it.

The story captured my attention within the first 3 chapters, something I look for in a book. Found myself reading and unable to put the book down, finishing reading it in 3 days. Well written, great love stories, yet tragic in a way that still made it seem beautiful. Definitely recommend but will leave you heartbroken. Love the friendship between “The Mothers” and definitely Autumn and Finny are the amazing characters some may be able to relate to. Definitely a book I would like to read again soon…

OMG….my heart feels like it was ripped right out of my chest and stomped on. Please go into this book without expecting a typical HEA. This is more of a tragedy with a little unexpected twist at the end. I don’t know why I was so completely taken aback by the ending as the whole story was laced with underlying melancholy. Honestly towards the end things were looking up and I thought it all was going to work out, but it ended differently than what I hoped for. I think that’s what will always have this book stand out to me is that it was not at all predictable. Definitely a roller coaster of emotions!!

If he had been with me by Laura Nowlin - " Like most of my stories, it will end tragically.

3.5/5

It's seemingly an odd feeling when you finish a book you could predict the ending of. I will start by saying that I liked the book. It was a beautiful coming-of-age story that puts you in the mindset of high school kids and leads you to reminisce on the friends you once had and the reasons you went your separate way. However, while this book has several good parts that I will mention, it also has some parts that deter me from singing its praises.

We'll start with the veggies. I couldn't believe how in denial Autumn was about her feelings for Finny. I mean I get that he's a popular boy now and it's an insecure thing to wonder why an attractive boy is into you but she knew him way before that. She'd known him since birth, long enough to know what his facial expressions and body language meant but she couldn't pick up that he liked her or even that he missed her. Another thing I disliked was the predictability of everything. From the second something was said you could picture the outcome. For instance, when Autumn said she and Sasha fought over Jamie in the beginning, as soon as Sasha broke up with her boyfriend and started hanging out with Jamie alone you knew what was going to happen. Also, as soon as her friend mentioned having unprotected sex you knew she was going to get pregnant which ruined the ending of the cycle continuing when Autumn has unprotected sex.

Now for the desert. I loved that the story was told from Autumn's point of view and I believe one of the most realistic feelings this book portrays is the relationship of Autumn's parents. As a teenager, you tend to ignore the adults around you because they don't understand you and you would never want their life and you get that from Autumn. She sees her absent father and knows not to depend on him or expect him to know why she wears tiaras or how she expresses herself. She looks at her mother and doesn't want to become her or exhibit the depressive episodes that she witnesses her mother go through. But in the end, when she loses Finny we see her become her mother and we get a glimpse of it when she goes through seasonal depression.

Overall, this book is a good read. After all, I couldn't put it down. It reminded me of what I was like as a teenager in some ways, the group of friends you'd never thought you'd lose until everyone's life changed. I also related to her relationship with her parents. There's so much to hold onto when reading this book. I just wish I didn't see the most shocking parts of the book coming. I wish I could've been surprised when Jamie cheated, her parents divorced, Finny confessed his love, when he died, her suicide attempt, and when she found out she was pregnant. Or maybe I wish he'd been with her.

Favorite Quotes: • I've loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn't change but grew. It grew to fill the parts of me that I did not have when I was a child. It grew with every new longing of my body and desire until there was not a piece of me that did not love him. And when I look at him, there is no other feeling in me. • Stay I whisper to him. Stay in the car. Stay in this moment. But of course he never does. • Perhaps he would ask me what books mean to me. I would tell him that it means living another life; • They don’t see that her tension and perfection are the only things holding her together. • I cannot imagine not wanting to live. I cannot imagine not believing that it will be better someday. I cannot imagine that there is nothing left to see, that there is nothing to tie me to Earth. As long as I want to live, then I must be fine. • If he had been with me, everything would have been different.

Favorite Characters: Finny, Autumn, Aunt Angelina, Angie, Alex, Jack

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!

At first I struggled to get the tone of this book. The sentences and narrative thought is blunt. I’m not even sure if that describes it. But it definitely gives you a sense of how a teenager thinks. It definitely reminded me of when I was a teen and how clicks work and the way friends fall out. The book kept me intrigued- possibly because I wanted to see Finny and Autumn get together. The whole book had a sense of doom and I wasn’t completely surprised by some of the reveals at the end. However, I feel short of left hanging. The ending was sort of abrupt compared to how I felt the suspense building and building through most of the book. I feel like I should have gotten more. But maybe that was the point (considering the ending). (Tried not to give spoilers)

SOME SPOILERS: I liked it but didn’t love it. The ending just pissed me off honestly and now you have to read the second part to understand more. I hate when books do this. I’m giving it 3 starts and maybe feel 2.5. I don’t understand why people have to kill off the main character get the other main character pregnant and go oh by the way read part 2! It’s frustrating and angers. I honestly don’t know if I’ll read part 2, the book was good but not great. I have so many words to how I feel I guess overall disappointed. I had more hopes than it’s worth.