Review can also be found at Snow White Hates Apples.

I completely loved the two TJR books I’ve read ( Daisy Jones & The Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo ) and wanted to give her debut novel a try, but sadly, Forever, Interrupted is not for me.

I was lured in by the first page when I read it and was certainly prepared for my heart to be stomped on by all the angst. However, as I read on, my interest waned because the execution of the story is just too poorly done.

To start, the writing is incredibly juvenile. It’s all chunks of tell, tell, tell which were a chore to go through, and the emotions in the narrative were so exaggerated and repetitive that it actually took away the impact. Furthermore, the switches between past and present felt disjointed. While I appreciate knowing how Elsie and Ben got together and all that, it was still draining to go continuously back and forth between joy and grief, grief and joy.

Appreciation of knowing the how aside, everything else about Elsie and Ben’s romance is an eye-roll fest. The insta-love was cringey, cliché and nauseatingly cheesy. I do actually read romances, and enjoy a good one in between all the other books I read, but this book was just too much at all the wrong places. I also couldn’t stand Elsie and Ben. The situations (including some of the side characters involved) they went through were often ridiculous, convenient and pointless. Plus, many of their actions and thoughts were so illogical that I can’t even label their illogicality as part of being human-like characters.

Anyway, I skipped a lot of the huge non-dialogue chunks in the story just so I could maintain my sanity while satisfying my desire to know what happened next. The final few chapters were nice, but ultimately, meh since I had expected things to end that way.

Everything considered, it’s clear that TJR has improved tremendously since her debut book. I don’t think I’ll be giving her other older books a try, but I definitely look forward to her newer releases. 

this book broke my heart. i really liked the complex exploration of grief. taylor jenkins reid remains my favourite author. i’ve read all of her books except After I Do and im so excited to read it!