As the season of love comes to a close, I want to bring back attention to a book released in early February of this year: If Only I Had Told Her by Laura Nowlin. There will be MID SPOILERS as this is the sequel to If He Had Been With Me, but I highly recommend reading both books!
This love story is told through three different perspectives, Finn, Jack, and Autumn, compared to the first book only following the perspective of Autumn. Some central themes include depression, death, grief, and transitioning to adulthood. Finn’s perspective begins three days before his death and we truly get to know what was going through his mind leading up to that moment. In the first book, we get a quick look into how Finn loves both Sylvie, his girlfriend, and Autumn, his childhood best friend. Reading from Autumn’s perspective, it wasn’t fully clear how he was able to “love” them both, but through his perspective, there was more clarity in the way he loved them differently. For Sylvie, it came from care and admiration of her, while for Autumn, it came from knowing her all his life and having a stronger relationship with her. I think the way Finn withheld the truth from Sylvie of how he truly felt for Autumn was a little immature- there could have been a better way to handle it, but that is also the beauty of the story. Love can be complicated, also there are always misunderstandings and assumptions, and as teenagers, it is hard to fully understand that the truth can make things easier in the long run for everyone involved.
As for the remaining perspectives, Jack’s perspective showcases how a close friend deals with the grief and loss of a friend. Nowlin writes the anger and grief of his character very well and truly displays the unfair feeling of life at the moment. During this time, he also goes through a crisis of identifying his true friends when Finn is no longer around. In a way, Finn was the hero that everyone adored while Jack was his sidekick, so without him by his side, he felt like his friend group only interacted with him through association with Finn. On top of this, Jack has to adjust to life in college without his best friend he was supposed to dorm with. The critical lesson learned from this is that life continues after death and it’s about feeling and processing all of the emotions before moving on. The pain will continue to hurt, but as time passes, it gets easier to handle.
Finally, with Autumn’s perspective, we get to see how she is dealing with Finn’s tragic death after where we left off in the first book. The addition of Autumn’s perspective served to tie loose ends from the previous book and show how time and processing feelings of loss and grief helps with healing from an intense loss. Something else to note is that all of these characters are around 18 years old, and a significant loss like this can affect everyone differently depending on the closeness of the relationship and prior exposure to this kind of pain. For example, while Jack was constantly reminded of Finn and the loss of his best friend, his grief brought about questions of who his true friends were. Autumn went through a depressive episode and lost her sense of meaning and purpose in life. The biggest takeaway is that we are in control of our response to what life throws at us no matter how long it takes to feel okay again, and this novel shows this through love, loss, and unexpected connections.
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