Book Review (more just a pile of my personal opinions from my personal experiences)

Title: One True Loves

Author: Elise Bryant

Year: 2022

Genre: YA Fiction/Romance

Queer shit: Gay friend, gay brother

Vibe Check: This book has everything! Betrayal, complex family dynamics, mental illness, pressures to succeed, the beauty of friendship, love after broken trust and also complete hesitancy with love because broken trust, a cruise ship, amazing countries I would like to go to, prom, planning for after high school, deciding what to do with your life. This is basically a book about an Enneagram 4 going on a family cruise and as an Enneagram 4, I am here for it. 

Pile of Opinions: This book was so much more than I expected. The story is about the best friend (Lenore) of the lead (Tessa) from happily Ever Afters, Elise Bryant’s debut book, who we already sort of knew was a strong-willed free spirit. The book mostly takes place on a Mediterranean cruise with her little sister who is a prodigy child already reading and comprehending at the collegiate level while barely being a tween, her older brother who is getting ready to start law school, and their parents. Lenore is about to go to prom and graduate, then spend two weeks of her summer on this family vacation. I loved how this book captured how much at this point in someone’s life is everything. I talk a lot about this but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop anytime soon, but we (adults) can be so rude and inconsiderate to teenagers by taking the mindset of “in a few years you’ll look back and this won’t seem like as big a deal” and I find this so demeaning. My crushes and loves as a teenager were everything and all-consuming and someone older belittling my experience was incredibly hurtful and damaging. Bryant writes these young adults so beautifully, their problems are real and they aren’t silly or childish. Relationships are difficult and complicated and we bring all our past experiences into our future relationships, and not just romantic. Siblings, parents, friends, all of these relationships help shape how we build and maintain relationships. Bryant also wrote beautifully about mental health, more specifically, panic attacks. As someone who experiences panic attacks and has had to learn how to navigate the world and explain myself to people about this, while being misunderstood about it, I really appreciated how gently she handled this subject. This book made me cry three completely separate times and it was wonderful. I highly recommend this book for a large number of reasons. The amount of personal reflection I did during this book felt like months worth of therapy. It was beautiful. I am looking forward to reading this one again.