I’m filing this one under “I’m likely the problem, not the book.” Honestly, I felt too old to be reading this - I think my teenage niece would adore it as much as she does Sally Rooney - but for this ageing millennial it didn’t work.

✰ 2.75 stars ✰

“Love, real love, can feel like it comes from the darkest cavern of us. It pulls us below the surface and it lives in that deep, secret place.”

Aristotle is quoted to have said, 'A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend's existence...makes us more fully conscious of our own existence.' And nothing could have been truer than This Love, a story that follows the lives of two best friends, Mae and Ari as they navigate decades of heady college days, complicated relationships, messy arguments, life-altering decisions, tortured confessions and familial heartbreaks, but always with the beautiful promise that throughout the many challenges, one thing that forever keep them connected is the indomitable perseverance of their friendship. 🫂

“OK, fine, there’s this other side of me that thinks finding a woman to love, having a house with a garden, a kid or two, a whippet called Willow, that’s the real dream. Tragically hetero, I know.’

‘Oh, but she can have it all!’ Ari moved his hands like a dancer. ‘And you will. I can tell. You don’t need to be ashamed about wanting those things.

They don’t belong to straight people; we are entitled to that kind of happiness too.”

Since their first meeting during their college years in 2014, Mae and Ari felt like kindred spirits - they balanced each other's passion and drives in a most fascinating way that made life shine even brighter than when they were apart. 'Being a girl who passed as a boy, and he a boy who could pass as a girl, meant power and freedom to her.' And while that can be a beautiful thing, it can also be a crippling one, when Mae is attracted to girls and Ari does not have any specific preferences. 🥺 With that defining point in their relationship, it slowly sets the groundwork of how it's something that not only at times breaks them apart, but what also keeps them together. And as the years go by, as we learn more about either of them and share in their experiences, we get to see how it's something that plays such a pivotal part for how they treat one another.

I really enjoyed the college years - full of youthful spirit, the vibrant tenacity and the sparkle of not knowing what future awaited them. There is a certain celebration to being queer that resonates so strongly in their story - how they embrace it and allow it to guide them in the decisions they make. 'But can I just enjoy who we are together, without the shadow? Be us for a little while longer?’ 🥹 As we enter their adult years, we get to see how either of them are trying to find their place in the world - to figure out what is the right track for them and where exactly do they fit into it and how they fit into each other's lives. Life has a way of even testing the tightest and best of friendships; it's at those moments, when Mae and Ari truly see how much they mean to each other, what is the worth of their friendship. The heart-breaking and emotional revelations that kept being thrown their way were hard for me to bear and I can only imagine how much it must have hurt either of them. ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

The narrative makes constant shifts in time jumps that oftentimes makes it confusing and hard to keep track of what exactly is happening. I understand that it is important to touch upon the people they were before they met, but I had a hard time discerning the importance of future moments that weren't even clearly depicted. 🙍🏻‍♀️ In an effort to maintain an air of mystery, I suppose, of what exact future awaited them. So, it did keep my interest, for a while. But, then at times the pacing started to drag and I would lose interest and wonder why it is necessary to show this moment or why was it such an insistent need to prolong it. 'That’s what’s so hard to accept – the if only.' But, I suppose, that is the love of life that we experience over the years.

“What we have is different and it’s special, and whoever either of us falls for in life, we won’t ever have with them what you and I have with each other.”

Ari was a difficult character for me - it's not that I didn't like him. It's that I didn't like why the author chose to give him such a tragic, if not, rather stereotypical portrayal. I respect that the author did dedicate it to people who were real-life Ari's so it would be a disservice for me to not acknowledge his struggles. I just didn't like it that he was presented with so many! 😫 So many obstacles, so many traumatic experiences, so much that made him question himself as a queer person and have to shame himself into being something different, simply to survive in a toxic and abusive relationship. It was frustrating and heart-breaking to see how much he was afflicted with and I didn't quite empathize with his growth as a character. It was bad enough that there were some lingering troubles rising up from Mae, I don't think it was so very fair that he never seemed to quite catch a break. And when he did, he would then be backed into another corner. 😥

Mae, however, truly became someone to be reckoned with. Overcoming her insecurities of her youth, she entered adulthood with ambition and a desire to make her presence felt, but never enough to commit to someone on an intimate level - till she did. Though, on a personal note, she endured a lot of heartbreak, her path to success was paved with some tough choices that forced her to examine herself not only as a woman, but as a woman in a competitive business. 🙋🏻‍♀️ She faced some difficult hurdles, and I appreciated how it was depicted, and how it continued to tie into Ari's life. For Ari was always there - he would always be there, and it is some of her feelings for him that made me like her slightly less sadly.

I do know that in MF friendships, especially one as close as there, it's always hard realizing that they may fall in love with someone else - that they can only ever be platonic. There was never not a clear indication of how strongly they felt for each other - they saw each other in a light, no one else ever would come close to. 🥺 But, the way she expressed her jealousy, how intent she was of clinging to him, and not really allowing him to spread his wings - really left a bad taste in my mouth. 'She had wanted to hold onto his heart. How wrong she’d been. There was space, so much space for this love.' As valid and natural as her honest feelings were, her blatant jealousy of his affections for anyone else wasn't something that resonated well with me. It made me dislike her for the majority of the book, and I didn't quite believe that she ever redeemed herself, in my eyes. 😒

“We’re soulmates, I suppose, that’s always felt the nearest to it.”

The story begins with an excerpt from Friedrich Nietzsche's The Gay Science - '...a kind of continuation of love in which this possessive craving of two people for each other gives way to a new desire and lust for possession – a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them. But who knows such love? Who has experienced it? Its right name is friendship.' Taking that into account, then Lotte Jeffs succeeded in depicting a deeply heartfelt exploration of it. 👍🏻 For while I was frustrated and angered at times by their choices and how their lives converged and eventually ended, it was not without their shared beauty and passion of what it means to love. To find it with someone that lets them create an unbreakable bond that binds them all together, as one. 💌

The characters felt very believable to me - their passions and emotions - expressive. The conflicts that arose were not without their grievances and faults and watching them navigate through them was at times heart-breaking, if not daunting, as well. But, Ari and Mae also experienced the joys of living, too; and even if it was not with each other - a failed chance at shot of what they hoped they could have been - it does not seem fair to dismiss and not appreciate what has been. 😔 That is the journey of life, for some, after all. Even if it's not something you set up to have, it doesn't mean that it wasn't worth the fight or the risk it took to get there. To have the chance to share in something that was entirely theirs - 'they are something new; a creature with a shared heartbeat and many limbs. A family.' 🫶🏻🫶🏻

*Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I am absolutely obsessed with this love story and how it centres platonic love. There isn’t enough books centred around the importance of this and it was so refreshing to read. As a northern english girl this had me from the start, but the beauty around how even with time apart found family is just as special as ever.

I loved this book! (spoilers further down in this review)

Ari and Mae meet at the University of Leeds and quickly become best friends and This Love follows them as they grow up into adulthood. It explores family and friendship and love (and platonic love is as important, if not more important than the romance in this book) in a really refreshing and authentic way.

All of the characters were brilliantly well rounded and enjoyable to read about. Even Oliver, as the "bad guy" of the story was not just some caricature of "bad" or deliberately hurtful.

I think my main complaint about this novel is potentially just pacing - looking back, there were a few sections that I don't think added much to the story and others that I'd have liked to have explored more. There's a lot of focus on how they're starting a family and them dealing with fertility issues but then little focus on the way that eventually, they do build as a family and I've have loved to see more of (spoilers) how V and Mae found the fostering / adoption process and how the boys adapted to their new lives with them as it ended up feeling a bit glossed over.

Anyway, I really enjoyed it and definitely recommend it.

This book! It's a love story but it's not about falling in love - it's about finding your people and sticking with them for life. It's a life story that starts at university and sees our main characters Ari and Mae going through life, sometimes very close to each other, sometimes not, but always knowing that the other one will be there for them. It's a story of love in all forms, some conventional and some not - an excellent 5 star read.

Following the lives of Ari and Mae over 10+ years and the found family, love and connections they form along the way.

Really embodied the intense love that comes from friendship and finding your platonic soulmate.
It didn’t skim over that people can be awful and horrible even to people they care for but also have room to grow and change.

I finished it feeling like all the characters were solid people.

It’s a slow moving story that flips back and forth between different years, but it’s nice to move with Ari and Mae and see where they were to where they go.

Beautifully queer.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher
4/5 ⭐️

This Love follows the story of Ari and Mae over the course of 10+ years. From meeting at the university of Leeds (yes, a total selling point to me, an ex Leeds graduate!) though to having a family. What makes this book special is its not a romantic love affair - it is a pure friendship - and these aren't written about enough. Two characters it is impossible not to love (not to mention a brilliant supporting cast).

GIVE THIS BOOK ALL THE STARS! I’m not kidding you. This book has kept me company for the last week and I feel bereft now I’ve finished it and know I will read it again. The characters feel like old friends and the book looks at some of the deepest of questions around love, family, soulmates. I just adored it.

Mae and Ari meet at university and this is the story of their close friendship, relationships and families, biological and chosen. It's a lovely book, beautifully written, with lots of sympathetic and interesting characters. I read it in a day and went through the whole range of emotions. Highly recommended.

This Love has been described as our generations One Day, and this decade-spanning tale of queer love, friendship and family is definitely one to remember. It’s a beautiful journey into the ever-changing nature of human connection and relationships, the way they evolve and grow with us through the years and it does it all with such grace.

Everything that a bohemian, youthful glow in the beginning - full of hope, late nights and endless possibilities, with the scenes changing as Mae and Ari grow up and grow older. It transported me back in time with such vivid nostalgia to the days I could stay up dancing all night and still make a 9am class, where I spent every weekend surrounded by friends and my only real concerns were if we should pregame or not. There was something in both of them that just reached out and was undeniably relatable.

The story moves slowly but in a leisurely way as opposed to a drag, moving through the year through the dark times, the happy moments and the confusion - at their closest and their most estranged and each time was so full of change and emotion.

This Love was a great depiction of different types of love and connections in our lives. How we build relationships and families. Also how life can get in the way of this. I most liked the university years, the vibes and general student life was captured so well. This took me back and had me reminiscing. After this the time jumps about a bit, I think I would have preferred a linear timeline to create more tension about what’s to come. The pacing felt slow at points and I think the time jumps created this. Saying that life has peaks and troughs. Overall this book is about love in all its forms and that’s a beautiful thing. Thank you to NetGalley and Dialogue Books for an E-ARC. This is a voluntary review of my own thoughts.

This is a story about best friends Ari & Mae spanning ten years from meeting at university taking them through their lives and how time influences the strength of their relationship. We meet several characters along the way; some who have a positive impact (V) and some who don’t (Oliver).

I really enjoyed the journey of platonic love between Ari & Mae, which was refreshingly told from a queer perspective. I liked that we weren’t taken through dramas which lead to predictable outcomes and the ups and downs of fertility & parenting were reflected honestly.

I was confused by the chapters set so far into the future and on reflection am not sure they added to the story all that much. The eventual ending could have just been delivered as a one timeline story. love stories where we follow alternative timelines but at times this felt a little clunky.

Overall this is a really well written book and I look forward to reading more from this author in future.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this in advance of publication.

This Love is a novel about queer families and friendship, following two friends across ten years. Mae and Ari meet at university in Leeds, with Ari having run from New York and being shrouded in mystery, and Mae breaking the hearts of all the girls she meets, but not able to deal with her parents' attempts to understand her. They become inseparable, and as their lives and change and diverge, they dream of bringing them back together, building further bonds between them, but life doesn't always go as expected.

The distinctive selling point of this book is it being about queer friendship and building unconventional families, playing on what different kinds of love mean to different people, and it does offer a good story of friendship, and a friendship that is built on being queer and feeling like soul mates. Mae and Ari are gripping protagonists, both vividly drawn especially near the start of the book, and the early part when they're at university was probably my favourite, depicting the way in which you can become very close with someone you've recently met just because you fit together. Mae's narrative felt subtle and carefully built, as she navigates changing priorities and finding a woman she doesn't want to disappear on, and in particular the complex feelings she has about her parents and the fact they don't reject her, but still don't always know how to navigate having a lesbian daughter.

However, I felt like Ari was done a bit of a disservice, with a lot of the interesting bits of Ari's character like gender, being pansexual but facing Mae's judgement about this, and dealing with events in the past, being either swept away or magically fixed (Ari also magically becomes a celebrity poet, which as a poet I found hilarious). For a book so interested in fluidity, it didn't really want to address the realities of Ari's experiences, except when in a coercive relationship (there's one point early on in the book when someone yells the T slur at Ari, and that is all you really see in terms of Ari's experiences of dressing more traditionally feminine, but throughout the book always being referred to as a man/'he', other than when in this relationship). It felt like the book was trying to say something about Mae and Ari both being gender nonconforming in their appearance, but never quite got there, in the same way that Ari's past in New York and the trauma from that is never quite explored in any meaningful way and the only part that seems to have an impact, with Ari having a lot of guilt around it, gets suddenly resolved near the end.

For me, the writing was what let the book down a bit, with the close third-person narration sometimes swapping mid-section or mid-paragraph who it was sharing the inner thoughts of, which I found disorienting, and the pace of the book generally being quite slow. There are a few cuts forward in time between each part of the book, which I thought didn't really add enough tension to need to be there, and I preferred the actual ending of the book rather than having these cuts ahead. The book also feels very separate to pop culture, probably an intentional choice due to the fact that the narrative end up some years in the future by the end, but I'm used to a lot of queer novels engaging with queer culture so this one felt a bit lacking in those references (but I imagine some people will like this element that makes it more timeless).

Overall, I liked what this book was trying to do and I like how throughout the book it brings together the characters to work on forming a queer family as they can, whilst their lives change. However, I found the pace slow and I kept expecting it to delve a bit more deeply into things rather than magically fix everything. This Love feels like it is trying to fit into a space between Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Detransition, Baby, and it is good that spaces like that are there, but this one frustrated me that it wasn't quite as fun to read, though it had a decent start and end.

I adored this book. Mae and Ari are such heartbreakingly lovable characters and drawn so well. I also thought that the depiction of university life was particularly realistic. It was so lovely to read such an ultimately heartwarming tale of chosen family around the holidays.

It's always great to read a queer romance novel. This definition grab my attention and I enjoyed seeing the developing and evolving relationships throughout