Review: Love, Rosie

Love, Rosie
Author: Cecelia Ahern
512 Pages
Published December 1, 2006

**I was so excited to find out this book was a movie as well, and made myself wait to finish the book before watching the trailer. I WAS SO DISAPPOINTED. It looks nothing like the book. If you have read and watched both is the movie worth it?! This book is near perfect and I don’t want the movie to ruin it for me.**

Synopsis:

From the bestselling author of PS, I Love You comes a delightfully enchanting novel about what happens when two people who are meant to be together just can’t seem to get it right.

Rosie and Alex are destined for one another, and everyone seems to know it but them. Best friends since childhood, their relationship gets closer by the day, until Alex gets the news that his family is leaving Dublin and moving to Boston. At 17, Rosie and Alex have just started to see each other in a more romantic light. Devastated, the two make plans for Rosie to apply to colleges in the U.S.

She gets into Boston University, Alex gets into Harvard, and everything is falling into place, when on the eve of her departure, Rosie gets news that will change their lives forever: She’s pregnant by a boy she’d gone out with while on the rebound from Alex.

Her dreams for college, Alex, and a glamorous career dashed, Rosie stays in Dublin to become a single mother, while Alex pursues a medical career and a new love in Boston. But destiny is a funny thing, and in this novel, structured as a series of clever e-mails, letters, notes, and a trail of missed opportunities, Alex and Rosie find out that fate isn’t done with them yet.

Review:

You deserve someone who loves you with every single beat of his heart, someone who thinks about you constantly, someone who spends every minute of every day just wondering what you’re doing, where you are, who you’re with, and if you’re OK. You need someone who can help you reach your dreams and who can protect you from your fears. You need someone who will treat you with respect, love every part of you, especially your flaws. You should be with someone who can make you happy, really happy, dancing on air happy.

Oh my the feels in this book just got me. So. Many. Feels. And that quote above is such an important thing that everyone should have with their significant other. I may have even wanted to tear up when I read this part – the little softy me. 🙂

Best friends Alex and Rosie meet at the age of five and quickly become the inseparable troublesome duo. They grow up side by side and slowly go down their own path of life, but forever returning to each other. This book spreads over their life in a span of several decades and we see them grow, see their lives change and go down another path, but no matter where their paths lead, no matter how long they don’t talk to each other, they also go back to each other.

At the age of 16 Alex’s father has been offered a new job in Boston, thus uprooting Alex and his family and moving them from Dublin, Ireland. Rosie and Alex are devastated, but they plan to both go to college near each other. Their senior year Alex is accepted to Harvard while Rosie is headed to Boston University. However, their plan quickly dissipates when Rosie’s life is thrown for a loop and she stays in Dublin.

While Alex is succeeding in his medical pursuits at Harvard (with all of Lady Luck and Fortune on his side), Rosie is struggling to be a single mother and nothing is handed to her on a silver platter. We see Rosie grow from a scared 18 year old, to a scared young mother and into a hardworking, determined mother. Over the decades we see marriages come together and fall apart, people come and go, children grow, and so much more.

I think such a major message that Cecilia Athern wanted the reader to take to heart was not to let missed opportunities happen. Go for everything and tell people how you really feel, regardless if you are unsure if that person reciprocates your feelings or not. You won’t truly know until you put yourself out there. Be vulnerable. Give life everything you have and do not let fear of the unknown stop you from pursuing your feelings or what you want. This story made me laugh and tear up and made me think of how much we take for granted. I absolutely loved Love, Rosie and its on my Favorites of 2016 list so far. A review can not do this book justice. You have to experience it.