Review: Who Do You Love by Jennifer Weiner

Who Do You Love by Jennifer Weiner

Series: No

Genres: Women's Fiction, Contemporary Romance

Release Date: August 27, 2015

Format: Trade Paperback

Source: Purchased

Find it here: GoodReads | Amazon

Rachel Blum and Andy Landis are eight years old when they meet late one night in an ER waiting room. Born with a congenital heart defect, Rachel is a veteran of hospitals, and she's intrigued by the boy who shows up all alone with a broken arm. He tells her his name. She tells him a story. After Andy's taken back to the emergency room and Rachel's sent back to her bed, they think they'll never see each other again. Rachel, the beloved, popular, and protected daughter of two doting parents, grows up wanting for nothing in a fancy Florida suburb. Andy grows up poor in Philadelphia with a single mom and a rare talent that will let him become one of the best runners of his generation. Over the course of three decades, through high school and college, marriages and divorces, from the pinnacles of victory and the heartbreak of defeat, Andy and Rachel will find each other again and again, until they are finally given a chance to decide whether love can surmount difference and distance and if they've been running toward each other all along.

It’s been years since I read anything by Jennifer Weiner but when I read the premise of this one I knew I had to read it. I think I fell a little in love with Rachel and Andy before I ever opened the book. I mean, that synopsis: a connection that forms in childhood, growing up in vastly different circumstances, re-connections, life experiences, and a timeline than spans thirty years. I was sold.

Andy and Rachel meet at the tender age of 8 when both are in a Miami hospital emergency room. Andy with a broken arm, Rachel with a heart defect. Rachel lives a privileged, if insulated, life and wants for nothing. Andy’s experience is harsher – the biracial only child of a single working mother in a gritty Philadelphia neighborhood. Their brief encounter isn’t forgotten by either of them and fate brings them together again as teenagers. And there begins a relationship that will test their love, make them question who they are, and will at times both comfort and falter.

I truly loved the evolution of Rachel and Andy’s story. I loved their precious first meeting (“Do you want to borrow my blanket? My nana made it.”). And I loved being present for the twists and turns their lives took, both together and apart. From the thrill of first love to the realization that sometimes just loving someone isn’t enough, Andy and Rachel live their lives both separately and together, experiencing highs and lows that truly touched my heart.

Weiner created a story that is so multi-layered, with complex characters who are oh so human and flawed, and with situations that have no easy answers. So many issues were seamlessly woven into the story – friendship, relationships, sex, marriage, divorce, race, class, success and failure – and it all blended to form one cohesive story that felt so true to life. Readers who demand an instant pay-off may be disappointed, but if you appreciate the journey as much as the destination you will surely fall in love with Who Do You Love.

4.5/5 STARS

Do you enjoy second-chance romances?