Somehow, I thought it was a good idea to give fantasy a break. I cannot say I regretted it; I can only say this one hit too close to home. So much so that I read and re-read it after, unable to move on from it.

There are some ways to love that get imprinted in your being—decisions, sentences, emotions that cannot be erased. As the author put it, “I would go to my grave thinking closure was bullshit. I knew better. There was only letting go. And I knew better than anyone that letting go was more of a feat than making peace with a goodbye, which is all closure was.”

The emotional damage this love brought me was too raw. The mix of my two loves – books and music – was too intense.

Of course, the clever way the book is written is everything. Suspense without suspense, I ate the pages at an unspeakable pace, eager to know, anxious to end. Just to return to the beginning and enjoy it all over again, because I am weird that way.
When I read it for the second time, I could not believe I had any doubts about the ending. There was no chance it would go any other way; it would be too misleading. But somehow my anxious doubts were more related to my own life choices than to the main character.

“Even in the silent car, the music wouldn’t stop. It refused to loosen its tight hold. The noose was around my heart, squeezing like a vise. The wound was opening, and I was helpless to stop it. It bled as a reminder of where I’d been. And if I couldn’t stop it, then I would embrace it. Whatever I had left, whatever part of me needed closure had revealed I would have to relive it, piece-by-piece, song-by-song.
But I didn’t really believe in closure.
No, closure was an excuse for some, a scapegoat for others. But that myth didn’t do anything but temporarily stifle the ache of missing someone.”

With this book, I also realized that I am, and will probably always be, too emotional, too dramatic. I feel too much; it was not only a personality trait from my young self. “Not me, I’ll have take-out every other night, stay up past midnight every day, get my passport stamped, eat weird shit, do things that scare me. I want to burn out”. And I still do.

In the end, the book tells us precisely that. We can change our young self for one reason or another, but we come back. We come back because there’s nothing like the freedom of being exactly who we are (and being loved for that exact reason).

I had my own Reid Crowne once. That’s probably the reason why this book ripped me apart.
The only difference is that he never really loved me back. Which, unfortunately, says nothing about the way I loved him.