Hi friends! So today I'm going to be doing a review on "If He Had Been With Me" by Laura Nowlin. This review is going to be short and sweet (like the title suggests) and spoiler free (however there will be the Goodreads synopsis in this and sometimes it can contain spoilers so please keep that in mind!
"If he had been with me everything would have been different...
I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know - the cause of the argument - is crucial.
So let me tell you..."
There are some triggering topics in this book, so please be advised to read up on the trigger warnings before reading this book
So the reason I wanted to read "If He Had Been With Me" was because I'd seen this title floating around booktok for a while now and my friend gave me a waterstones giftcard for my birthday so I bought it with that. So many people told me this book was sad and that I should emotionally prepare myself for what was going to happen. Nothing could've prepared me for the feelings I went through with this book. "If He Had Been With Me" was so beautifully written but it also hits some very hard topics throughout. The one thing I will say about this book is that I do think it is just a little too dark to be put under the YA genre (which is what it is under), but still reads like a YA read with how juvenile the characters can be at times. Some of the book was repetitive and took a little while to get through however I still found myself enjoying it and understood why it had to be that way in order for us to get emotionally attached to the characters. I was expecting throughout the whole book what was going to happen as it tells us in the first few pages, but it still did not fail to break my heart. I would recommend this to anyone who would like to read a sad contemporary novel but once again would advise reading the triggers in case you wouldn't be in a good head space for this book. I also wouldn't recommend this to the younger YA audience because once again, the themes are just a little to dark.
My favourite characters:
- Autumn: So Autumn is our main character and I know we're supposed to love her but I didn't realise just how much my teenage self would relate to her. I'm so glad we got to read the story through her perspective and I just loved the growth that she had throughout the book.
- Finny: Finny is honestly such a sweetheart and I loved every single scene that he was in. He was always kind to Autumn (even if sometimes she didn't deserve it) and I found myself getting so attached to him
My least favourite characters:
- Jamie: Firstly I just want to say, girls if you ever meet a boy like Jamie, RUN! Jamie was such a shitty character throughout the book and the author made him so easy to dislike. I actually wish there was less of him in the book than what we got.
I gave this book a 4/5 star rating on Goodreads.
What did you think of this book? Who were your favourite or least favourite characters? Do you have any books you'd recommend for me to read and do a review on? Please let me know down in the comments below!
Have a wonderful day!
Love, Doe!
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