“I think true love means loving truly. Loving purely. Loving wholly” (Reid 323).
One True Loves is a beautiful love story about a young woman named Emma who loses her husband in a helicopter crash over the Pacific Ocean. After feeling wrecked by the significant loss, she finds herself back in her hometown, trying to pick up the pieces of her life. It is in this place, several years later, that she reunites with a childhood friend and allows herself to experience love again. But just as she is about to get married for the second time, her first husband is found alive and is coming home to Emma. Now, she is struggling to choose between the two loves of her life, as both men are fighting for her and represent the vastly different ways they have helped her grow throughout her life. It is through this decision that she learns the importance of love in one’s life and how the phrase “true love” can contain a multitude of meanings and complexities.
This book was one of the few better-written romance novels that I have read recently. Taylor Jenkins Reid has such a talent at storytelling and can get you hooked right away, but also knows how to keep a reader’s attention. This novel, though, is not for everyone, and if you do not like overly-sentimental and heartfelt pieces of work, I would not recommend this to you. But, on that note, it is perfect if you appreciate stories that give you the space to reflect and connect, as there is such a personal aspect to her writing and includes several layers of emotion, even outside of the turmoil that is happening between the main characters.