lila ୧'s Reviews > If Only I Had Told Her

→4.5✰
⤿spoilers are marked!
thank u to bsf syd for listening to my endless ranting 😽 i miss u and i love u infinitely 💌

🥀‧₊˚ "like, fairy-tale love? cartoon character with hearts floating all around him? or a movie montage with the best song? that's what you were to him. you were the biggest, most impossible dream for him."

thoughts. this book was both exactly what i needed and exactly the thing that would be my breaking point. it put my heart back together (temporarily), then turned it inside out, threw it on the ground, stomped on it, crumpled it like a piece of paper, and then smoothed it out. my heart won't ever be the same as it was before autumn and finny. also alexis aggravated me 🥰 and sylvie's not too bad never ever thought i would say that also imagine if laura nowlin wrote a book of like just finny and autumn's memories from their childhood. i would pay good money for that

this book is split into three parts: finny, jack, and autumn. which would have been great to know before hand bcuz i genuinely thought this book would be all finny 🤧 i was disappointed at first but it pays off

finny. (spoilers for if he had been with me !!) words cannot express how much i love this man. he deserved everything, and i'm mad at laura nowlin for doing what she did. i am 99.99% convinced that it didn't have to happen and we could have gotten a sweet little sequel where autumn and finny are happy and they stay together forever and ever. he was so in love with autumn and it hurt to read his part bcuz wtf. and i knew it was coming too. he's such a sweetheart. HE DIDN'T HAVE TO GET OUT OF THE STUPID CAR AND PUT HIS HAND IN THAT STUPID PUDDLE. if his hand was like a couple inches or maybe centimeters away from that water he wouldn't have you know. and the way he kept that pencil for that girl bcuz she was always losing hers (if ykyk)

🥀‧₊˚ "my devotion to autumn is engraved in my very being. i am in awe of her. i will sit in the stands and cheer her on in life as her most ardent admirer. i know i will always love her in the same way i know i'll always need oxygen."

jack. (spoilers for if he had been with me !!) i adored how much more depth we get in this book. when i first read if he had been with me i thought that jack would be one of those jocks who doesn't give a fuck about anyone or anything other than partying. but here we learn about how finny was genuinely his very best friend and probably the realest and most caring person he knew. the thing that stuck out to me the most while reading jack's part was how hard he grieved. i'm not going to go into too much depth bcuz i suck at explaining things so i'll probably end up rambling 😭

🥀‧₊˚ "it matters which people you spend time with, and it matters how you spend your time, because you don't know how much you have."

autumn. her sadness rubbed off on me

🥀‧₊˚ "when you're reading a book and you can't focus, ask yourself, 'how much is the writer's fault, and how much is mine?' be honest. that's how you'll know if you should set it aside forever or for a few hours."

quotes. (spoilers !!)
⊹ "books are autumn's real life. she is made of the stories she has read."
⤿ honestly real

⊹ "if only i'd told her that i loved her years ago, i wouldn't be here now."

⊹ “i’ve seen her finish a novel, pause staring off into space for a minute like she’s receiving instructions, and then open another book. it’s as if her job is to read and she’s behind on her quota.”

⊹ “this baby isn't what's left over from our love story. this baby is our story's continuation.”

⊹“but that doesn’t make doing this without him any easier. so this is where i live, in a place where every shade of joy must be painted over in the black of finny’s death, muted to the gray of willfully existing.”
˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖
pre-review
well that was something
rtc !!
˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖
pre-read
after a year YEARS of waiting, i finally have this in my hands!! can't wait for my heart to break all over again <3