Losing You

Losing You by Susan Lewis is another book I picked up at my local station's free book exchange, which has definitely introduced me to some authors I never would have read without it.

It's about 18-year-old Lauren and 21-year-old Oliver, whose lives collide on a fateful night that plunges both them and their families into a very different future to the one they had all previously expected.

And it's really good!

It engaged me immediately and kept me gripped pretty much throughout, despite being probably about 200 pages longer than it needed to be.

I really enjoyed the lengthy setup (200 pages of normal family life that was still very entertaining, even though there was almost no tension), though the middle section did drag a little bit as it became somewhat repetitive. It really picked up again in the last 300 pages, though.

The characters felt real, the inter-relationships were layered and interesting, the way things eventually played out was refreshingly realistic in unexpected ways, and the late-stage romance was surprising and also wonderful.

There were some aspects of the writing that annoyed me initially, but I found (in an extremely rare instance for me) that I just wanted to go along for the ride and not pick holes in this book - and I definitely enjoyed it a lot more for that.

I will certainly look out for more books by this author, if this one is a good indication of the kind of reading experience I can expect.