This Love

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

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.

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 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.

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 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).

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.

A truly gorgeous read, I loved how Mae and Ari’s friendship was explored – through the different time periods (university, different cities, relationships etc.) as well as through their sexuality and how this fit in to their lives. How beautiful to see representation of families being shown in different ways – building your own family, as well as found family and blood family. Incredible.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

Love love love this book = I couldn't put it down once I started reading it, the story is so touching and has so many possibilities loaded into it.

Mae and Ari meet while they are at university, make a promise and form a bond that is set to last them a lifetime. The time at university is so nostalgic, the hurt and the past experiences seem very real and lived, and as time goes on the chances and mischances that happen weave a wonderful deep story of a kinds of love and friendships.

All the characters seem to be lightly but meaningfully sketched, their interactions ring true and the theme of building a family of your own, in your own time and way, is strong throughout, as are all the types of love that are on display, front, centre and also in the background.

The book made my heart ache and my soul sing - what a marvellous story, read it and enjoy.

I loved this very human story of two queer young people, Ari and Mae, who meet at university and become platonic soulmates. We see their friendship and love explored over a decade of exploring love, work and other life events. It’s not a cosy story. It feels very real, in the way they fall out, the way they manage when the other finds a romantic partner and in the challenges they face in trying to consider what family means.
Ari and Mae felt very real to me, and I was rooting for them throughout the book. Other characters are well-drawn too. There’s a tine-skip which I am a bit uncertain of. I think the story could have developed in a linear fashion and had the same impact, but that’s a minor niggle in a book which is a lovely, very real feeling, read.

I really loved this book, and find the comparisons to One Day irritatingly basic. Please don't let it put you off.

As someone who has been lucky enough to have a multi-decade, fiercely committed queer platonic friendship that started at university, this story resonated deeply with me. I am the flamboyant Ari to a wonderfully reliable Mae. I absolutely could have imagined us making promises to make a family together if that's what we had wanted from our lives.

Thank you to the author for capturing this kind of queer relationship on the page. It's rare that we get to see our multidimensional sense of family in the mainstream.

This love starts with an intriguing beginning, fully queer, following the main characters Ari and Mae from their uni days to 10 years later, having different partners, drifting in and out. The writing is easy to read, though I would have liked it more if it's written more beautifully and a 100 pages shorter, but I do love the poems that the characters wrote.

I love the storyline, though it's slightly unrealistically optimistic. Also the chapters about the future were a bit confusing, was not sure whether it's only in their imagination or real. The second half of the book focus a lot on queer parenting, it does provide readers a point of view and information on the topic as it's rare to see in fiction books in my opinion. I do wish the relationship between the characters were written more in-depth, however, it's a nice queer love story that I enjoyed reading.

Thank you Netgalley for the advanced e-copy