★★★★★ The Love That Split The World By Emily Henry
Synopsis: Natalie Cleary must risk her future and leap blindly into a vast unknown for the chance to build a new world with the boy she loves.
Natalie’s last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start… until she starts seeing the “wrong things.” They’re just momentary glimpses at first—her front door is red instead of its usual green, there’s a pre-school where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn’t right.
That’s when she gets a visit from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls “Grandmother,” who tells her: “You have three months to save him.” The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it’s as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau.
Emily Henry’s stunning debut novel is Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler’s Wife, and perfectly captures those bittersweet months after high school, when we dream not only of the future, but of all the roads and paths we’ve left untaken.
Review: Why did no one warn me I was going to cry buckets of tears while reading this book? I truly thought I was becoming an emotionless robot because I haven’t cried while reading in AGES. Surprise! Guess I was keeping them all stored up for this read.
This book has a lot of things. Luckily, all things I love and somehow all work together to make this beauty of a novel. We’ve got something like magical realism, a little bit of science fiction, some (a lot) of romance, a collection of short stories, a diverse set of characters and it’s all led by our very cool main character, Natalie, trying to solve a mystery. Yes yes yes! Give me more.
I promise you, you’ll have no idea where this story is going. I still can’t imagine how Henry came up with the idea for this book. It’s just so weird (in the best way.) I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next. If it’s anything like this novel, it will be going straight to my favorites.
Bottomline: Highly recommend. Read it now. Particularly if you’re a fan of unconventional love stories and out-of-this-world plot lines.