2015 Book #82 – Who Do You Love by Jennifer Weiner

Title: Who Do You Love
Author: Jennifer Weiner
Date finished: 8/7/15
Genre: Fiction, Romance-ish, Women’s fiction
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication Date: August 11, 2015
Pages in book: 400
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: NetGalley NOTE: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

Blurb from the cover:

An unforgettable story about true love, real life, and second chances…
Rachel Blum and Andy Landis are just eight years old when they meet one night in an ER waiting room. Born with a congenital heart defect, Rachel is a veteran of hospitals, and she’s intrigued by the boy who shows up alone with a broken arm. He tells her his name. She tells him a story. After Andy’s taken back to a doctor and Rachel’s sent back to her bed, they think they’ll never see each other again.
Rachel grows up in an affluent Florida suburb, the popular and protected daughter of two doting parents. Andy grows up poor in Philadelphia with a single mom and a rare talent for running.
Yet, over the next three decades, Andy and Rachel will meet again and again—linked by chance, history, and the memory of the first time they met, a night that changed the course of both of their lives.
A sweeping, warmhearted, and intimate tale, Who Do You Love is an extraordinary novel about the passage of time, the way people change and change each other, and how the measure of a life is who you love.

My rating: 3.75 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for ARC August reading challenge, it is #4 on list from my sign up post. I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review. This book is about Rachel Blum, who meets a boy named Andy Landis when they’re coincidentally in the same hospital on the same night when they were young children. Rachel waited with Andy in the ER waiting room since his mom wasn’t with him and told him stories. Their lives seem to be intertwined since they end up encountering each other years later when they are both in high school.
What follows is an on and off relationship that spans across decades. A story of true love and second (or third or fourth) chances. Whenever Andy and Rachel meet up again it seems as if no time has passed and neither has ever stopped loving the other. Andy seems to make many mistakes along the way and I think that both he and Rachel have to grow quite a bit before their lives can permanently fit together. In the meantime, they both continue on their life path separately and have many important life experiences.
Overall I enjoyed this book. I thought the story line was sweet and touching. I thought the characters were wonderfully flawed and I really felt like I was given an opportunity to connect with them through the book. There were some plot developments that were interesting and obviously necessary to the story line but that I didn’t necessarily expect. I think the only thing I would be able to complain about is that I thought the ending was a little quick. I thought we were going to get to the reunion part where they fall back in love and what not and then bang it happened and two sentences later the story was over. I usually like a little wrap up (epilogue) even if its just like “oh it’s been a week and they’re still happy.” Other than that though I thought this was a good book.

The bottom line: I thought this was a touching, sweet story. I can’t say that it was a story that really grabbed me but it dig tug at my heart-strings. I would recommend it to readers who like women’s fiction.

Favorite Quotes:
“I realized, as he touched my cheek, then my hair, that I had never stopped hoping for this, not in all the years we’d been apart.”

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page