I tend to go into books without reading the synopsis. I’ll judge a book by its cover or I’ll be persuaded to choose my next read based on the author/title etc. so I didn’t know what I was stepping into reading this. I genuinely thought it was going to be a nice, light hearted rom com. The perfect summer read.

But this book is not that at all. It is real life. It is that nitty gritty real life love and it was one of the most beautiful stories.

I’ll start off by saying this was heavy at first and took me a while to get into, but only because my mum has Parkinson’s so the story felt a bit too close to home. But I’m trying to see the beauty in the tale over the disease. I also appreciated the fact Neff brought up the fact that you can lose your sense of smell due to the disease because after covid, this can go unseen or shrugged off.

But I must say I’m so glad I persisted in reading this. I don’t get overly emotional at books but I will admit I cried at this. It is such a raw, powerful read about love, loss and family and if you want your heart to hurt whilst, and for sometimes after, you’re reading a book - this is the one for you.

My first five star Net Galley read - thank you so to Net Galley for this arc and for Amy Neff for writing such a stunning love story.

What a wonderful debut novel this is. Heartwarming and heartbreaking in equal measures. I did love Joseph's final decision !!!!
Many thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC

Such a beautiful and emotional story, it’s a fantastic read which stays with you long after you’ve read it. I will be reading other titles from this author, loved it.

I thought that this would be inspiring and it was in some ways. However too close to personal circumstances to be a comfortable read so I decided not to finish it.
The writing is good and the characters well described so for some it will be a sensitive portrayal of an emotive subject.
Thank you Netgalley for the ARC

This is such a beautiful heartwarming story. It will break your
heart but will then help you mend it

I was so excited to be given this book as an ARC and I literally couldn't wait to read it. I wasn't disappointed at all - what an amazing book.
I cried and I cried and I cried.
It broke my heart but I just couldn't get enough.
I'm still not over it.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Days I Loved You Most by Amy Neff

Evelyn and Joseph, a couple in their seventies, gather together their three children to tell them that they have decided to end their lives in one year's time. We go backwards to every stage of their life together over the course of the book, and their epic love story is revealed. But will the pull of family change their minds about not wanting to live without each other?

Wow, what a fantastic story! I absolutely loved the way the author covered their entire life together and the joy and challenges they faced along the way. Lovely family, lovely setting and lovely ending. Very VERY highly recommended.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

A heartwarming and sweet book featuring an old married couple who tell their families they will be ending their lives in a year….this allows us the journey of how they fell in love and their ups and downs. Sweet but a little bit slow, I’m not sure I truly connected with the characters either.

When Evelyn and Joseph tell their family that she is ill and that they plan to take their lives together in a year’s time, they are met with horror, anger and disbelief. They particularly cannot understand why Joseph would choose to end his life when he is not ill, but he knows his life will be nothing without his wife by his side.
The book alternates between the two of them telling their story, and between the past and present. When their youngest daughter says she wants a divorce, partly because her marriage cannot live up to that of her parents, we go back in time to find out about their trials and tribulations, mostly that Joseph and the life he provided for Evelyn were not always enough for her, and how they got through them.
This is a beautiful book which explores the relationship between the main characters and also between them and their children. It also explores euthenasia and attitudes towards choosing to end your own life when illness becomes too much. Highly recommended.

This is a heartwarming and heart breaking read about a couple who make the decision due to illness to end their lives one year from the when the story opens.

Telling their families is very difficult and as we move through the story we see their children’s pov and set in a dual timeline we learn how they met and the journey of their lives through some 60 years.

I loved that their love was enduring and their love for each other hasn’t waned and seeing how they get together and the up and downs of their life together gives a fuller experience with the characters.

It’s a sad and difficult read in places and would make a fabulous film on the big screen. There are some difficult topics so readers should check trigger warnings before going in.

A wonderful story of love between two people who have spend their lives together.

A powerful and emotional debut novel that I will never forget.

Tommy and Evelyn Saunders have always lived in Stonybrook, Connecticut. They have grown as children, a tight friendship band with Tommy’s best friend next door Joseph Myers.
An inseparable trio.
Things inevitably change, new chapters, life evolves.

This is a love story but not in the hearts and flowers, and everything in the garden rosy style. It is powerfully emotional, written with meaning and depth. It covers sensitive issues.
I’ve never read a story before that’s come from the heart as much as Joseph’s emotional thoughts and feelings, and I found it refreshingly good to see things from his angle and perspective.
The book moves backwards and forwards in time, relaying the story, filling in the blanks.
I loved this book, but have tissues handy.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Publisher for an advanced e-book copy. Opinions about the book are entirely my own.

This book will wreck you, be warned.
It is so heart wrenchingly beautiful and so full of sadness and hope and love and despair and pain and healing - it really has everything. It's a story of an epic love, the kind we all aspire to have, but at the same time the relationship between Evelyn and Joseph is rooted in normality and familiarity. The ebbs and flows of their lives are shared with us, there is no rose-tinting going on here. What there is is an examination of what it both gives you and takes from you to love someone so absolutely for so many years, the work you have to do, the sacrifices you have to make, and the rewards you will reap.
Given that the premise of the story is that Evelyn and Joseph have decided to end their lives after one last year with their family, this is also a meditation on grief and mortality, and both are written about with such care and understanding that the overriding feeling I was left with at the end wasn't sadness but happiness that they had got to be in each others lives and built such a beautiful family for the years that they shared. Including the dual timeline to show how their love had grown and the things they had experienced and weathered together really gave a feeling that you knew this family - the one that ran that Inn down the lane, the Inn I could picture so vividly. This is cinematic writing, for sure.

what a beautiful story, it’s written with such love and attention to detail . the way everyone’s story is told but then all leads back together is breathtaking and honest.
a story of life, love, sacrifice and dreams
one thing of note, not a book to read on holiday at the side of the pool, it made me cry ugly tears…

This is a lovely and moving story about Joseph and Evelyn who grew up living next door to each other - then fell in love and have lived all of their lives together. Evelyn has received tragic news about her health and they decide that they will end their lives together on their own terms in a years time. As you can imagine their grown up children aren't too happy ! Told in flashbacks of their younger days this is a heartbreaking but also lovely story of their lives and the decision they make. Have some tissues handy! Very sad but beautiful and uplifting in the end.

A moving book that covers some tough subjects but is full of love, family and life affirming messages.
I felt the portrayal of adult children & aging parents really accurate and how they interact as siblings also. The historical stories of Evelyn and Joseph from both perspectives was written so wonderfully and I felt the ending was fittingly beautiful

My heartfelt thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read ‘The Days I Loved You Most’ beautifully written by Amy Neff in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

Evelyn and Joseph Myers live in their old house in New England that was once a hotel but is now the home they share with their visiting children Jane, Thomas and Violet and their families. Evelyn and Joseph have known each other for ever, growing up together in the 1940s, separated when Joseph and her brother Tommy enlist to fight in the war, to the present time of 2001 as Evelyn is given a health diagnosis that isn’t going to go away. Now in their 70s, both Evelyn and Joseph know that they can’t live without each other so they’ve decided to end their lives on their own terms in a year’s time.

‘The Days I Loved You Most’ is a heartbreaking love story and family drama of Evelyn and Joseph and how their family deal with the news that they’ve decided to end their lives in June 2002. The story portrays the highs and lows of family life, the good days and the bad ones, but we can’t dispute the love they’ve had for each that’s grown over the years. I’ve struggled to put down my thoughts regarding this wonderful story as I’ve been crying so much I can’t see the keyboard, and the story is so poignant and utterly moving that I’m still thinking about this couple and their family hours after closing the book. I loved this story, didn’t want it to end, and if you read just one book this year make it this one, but be ready to have tissues nearby as you’ll need them.

REVIEW
cw: death, grief, survivor guilt, dementia, Parkinson's, infertility, mentions of 9/11, drug use, and suicide

Evelyn and Joseph fell in love as teens in 1941, on the shores of Stonybrook, New England. Sixty years later, they've gathered their adult children to deliver the hardest news. Evelyn has received a devastating diagnosis, and Joseph cannot live without her. So they've made a pact. In exactly a year, they'll end their lives on their own terms. The Days I Loved You Most spans sixty years, and several notable historical events, retracing all the highs and lows of their lives as they endeavour to celebrate their family and live out their greatest dreams.

Within the first few pages, I knew this book would absolutely wreck me, and it didn't disappoint me. It was so incredibly moving that I was in tears on almost every page, even when they were sharing happy moments. But it was also so beautifully told, and ultimately uplifting.
Told in a mixture of flashbacks and the present day, Amy Neff slowly revealed the loves and losses that Evelyn, Joseph, and their three children Jane, Thomas, and Violet have encountered over the years.
My favourite (but also most painful) chapters belonged to Joseph. I adored how much he loved Evelyn, and his gifts of violets were so beautifully interwoven throughout. The description of the garden that Joseph created later on was perfect. His recollection of his early life was beautiful, but, even though I had a feeling it was coming, chapter 6 broke my heart. But I ADORED the celebration they planned for Thomas's tenth birthday.
Evelyn's chapters were so raw and often relatable, especially when she spoke of how exhausting and thankless motherhood could be, but also how joyous. The author perfectly described those early years of motherhood when you’re constantly exhausted and on a merry-go-round of repeated chores. Evelyn's conflict between her dreams and her one true love was just as well-written and incredibly moving, but chapter 17 was SO beautifully written, and made me cry happy tears. The fraught generational maternal relationships were equally relatable and particularly well-written. But the most painfully accurate parts were the paragraphs devoted to her developing Parkinson's, and the associated dementia, both from her own POV and that of her family's. Having watched these changes myself, I felt the emotions of her family viscerally.
I don't tend to like more than two POVs, but it worked perfectly here, and I LOVED that we got all of the children's thoughts and feelings at different points in the story. Still, I was incredibly moved by Thomas's POV, especially the visceral gut-punch memories of that day in 2001. My heart broke for the losses and trials he went through in his life, but I adored his love for Amy. Meanwhile, I completely empathised with Violet and Jane as they tried to make sense of love and relationships for themselves, especially given how daunting it was to even try to live up to a seemingly perfect love story like that of their parents. That said, this was always Evelyn and Joseph's story first and foremost, and no relationship is ever perfect. Their tougher moments were interwoven with care and sensitivity, and the spectre of grief and loss (both past and present) was never far away. Chapter 27 left me shocked, and utterly bereft. But the ending was perfect, and ultimately uplifting.
An amazing debut and a truly beautiful story.

Overall Rating: ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
Heat Rating: 0.5

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own*

Favourite Quotes:

"We don’t want a half-life. We don’t want a life without each other,”

“I’ve spent too many days without you.”

“I will never stop wishing for more time with you.”

Our entire life like a series of shorter marriages to each other, linked in their similarities, but distinct. Familiar, but changed. Even in marriage she has never been mine, even now as we face our end together. She has never belonged to anyone but herself, and I have never belonged to anyone but her.

"Our lives—” I gesture at Evelyn “— have always contained each other. I’ve only known this world with your mother in it. A world without her, frankly, isn’t one I want to wake up in."

Losing Evelyn, outliving the person who is the source of my heartbeat, or watching her wither into a rag doll version of herself, a pianist who could no longer use her hands to create the music she loves, or to wait until she doesn’t recognize me, until she ceases to be Evelyn at all, to walk through the halls of our home alone… that would be impossible to endure.

“I’ll follow you anywhere.”

Real commitment requires cultivation. It’s not about the tingle in your belly and a rush of adrenaline. It’s not magic, or fairy dust, that sustains a spark. Steadiness over time is what makes it beautiful.

“All those people… they had no warning, no final year to live out their dreams. No time to call their families, to say goodbye. And here we are, dying at will. It’s not fair.”
“Nothing about this is fair,”

"I’m more scared of staying, of being alone at the end in my own head.”

My wife, my love, her dreams scribbled in ink, her eyes always on the clouds. She is my symphony.

This life, together. It was enough. It was everything.

“I don’t want to live as less than I am.”

Look at the beautiful garden we have made, Evelyn. Together.

Wow!
This absolutely broke me. What an incredible novel. Make sure you have lots of tissues handy.

Oh my goodness…..I loved this book so much! It tells the beautifully written life stories of Evelyn and Joseph who decide that they cannot be apart, even in death. Their adult children think that their parents have the perfect marriage but, as their story unfolds throughout the story, we find that they have had their share of life’s ups and downs. Now both in their 70s, their marriage is stronger than ever and their story is beautiful, poignant and extremely touching. I cannot recommend this book enough as I will remember it for a long time to come.

I absolutely loved this book, but I never want to read it again. It emotionally wrecked me and made me cry at the end, and it’s pretty rare for a book to have that effect on me. I knew from the first page that it was going to be that kind of book, but I carried on reading anyway. I’m a glutton for punishment, it seems!

The Days I Loved You Most spans a lifetime between Joseph and Evelyn, from their friendship as teenagers in the early 40s, to their life as an elderly couple at the turn of the millennium. It covers major world events like WWII, the assassination of JFK, and 9/11, and seamlessly weaves a fictional story through every real life tragedy. It never stops tugging on the heartstrings, and I had tears in my eyes more than once.

Joseph and Evelyn are some of the most memorable fictional characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting within the pages of a book, and I was devastated by the time I finished it. Nothing played out like I thought it would, and the final few chapters caught me so off guard. I’d prepared myself for the conclusion I thought I was going to get, and that all changed in an instant.

The Days I Loved You Most is the very definition of a family saga, and I could write so much more about every facet of it. At its core, it’s simply the story of two young people and the paths they decide to take. It’s about life, love, and all the many ups and downs along the way, and how one choice can shape a future. Amy Neff’s beautiful writing makes it a debut novel to remember, and I’m declaring it now as one of the best books of 2024.