The Love That Split The World by Emily Henry

The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry
ISBN: 9781595148513
Published by Penguin on January 10, 2017
Genres: Romance, Science Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 416
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"A truly profound debut."--Buzzfeed

"A time-bending suspense that's contemplative and fresh, evocative and gripping."--USA Today

"Henry's story captivates, both as a romance and as an imaginative rethinking of time and space."--Publishers Weekly

"This time-traveling, magical, and beautifully written love story definitely deserves a spot on your bookshelf."--Bustle

Emily Henry's stunning debut novel is Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler's Wife and perfectly captures those bittersweet months after high school, when we dream not only of the future, but of all the roads and paths we've left untaken.

Natalie's last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start . . . until she starts seeing the "wrong things." They're just momentary glimpses at first--her front door is red instead of its usual green, there's a preschool where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn't right.

Then there are the visits from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls "Grandmother," who tells her, "You have three months to save him." The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it's as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau.

I think Emily Henry is a new favorite author of mine. I expected to be intrigued, but I didn’t expect to be so impacted by this book.

It’s very twisty, so I don’t want to give anything away, but woven throughout the mystery plot is some lovely character development of the MC. The best friendship is beautiful, as is the MC’s family dynamic- just absolute shining gems of realistic but also loving and supportive. On a personal note, the MC’s decision around leaving her longtime boyfriend (before the book begins) resonated strongly with me, with parallels to my recent divorce, which made me all the more invested in the MC even though we’re not very alike.

The love interest is objectively a bit of a trope (kind but tortured hot guy) BUT the story and the romance is so beautifully executed that I didn’t mind at all. I was 100% in support of the MC, even though there were a few times I was groaning in frustration at her choices (including every time she left the room Beau was in, because….I have a thing for mildly broken hot guys, apparently).

But when we’re talking about a sci-fi concept that makes you think, I have a high bar. I expect to be able to follow along enough to try and figure out what’s happening myself. I expect the author to be consistent in what the “rules” of the setting are. And I expect to either be surprised or just barely figure it out before the MC, so I can feel smugly smart. That’s a tall order, because each of those things is highly subjective for the reader. So I was blown away that Emily Henry 100% met my high bar.

There’s a moment near the very end where the MC starts to figure out what’s happening, but she hasn’t yet figured out what she has to do. But the author gives enough hints that you as the reader connect the dots pretty immediately. And once I connected those dots, I could see the trail Henry left from that point back through the beginning of the book, pointing toward the MC’s choice being “the right one”- both the overt messages and the subtle circumstances.

I don’t often get moments of epiphany during reading, but this was :chefkiss:. And knowing how difficult it must’ve been to lay that foundation without tipping off the reader too early makes me respect Emily Henry so much.

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