How to
Love
Katie Cotugno
Quercus 2013
Reena loved Sawyer for a long, long
time. She loved him from afar, never
believing he’d ever think of her the same way, especially when he took up with
her best friend, Allie. But then he does
and then Allie is gone and after a while so is Sawyer, leaving behind Reena and
a pregnancy and no way to reach him.
Three years later, Reena and her daughter are OK. Life isn’t perfect but
Reena is managing. Until Sawyer appears
as suddenly as he disappeared, drawing in his wake the same emotional wreckage
that Reena has fought to rid herself of.
Reena is angry and hurt and confused and above all she is determined not
to let Sawyer into her life again but love, like life, is messy and complicated
and Reena is about to learn just how hard it can be.
Reena is an excellent character, be it in
the present day as a young mother, or her previous incarnation of a young adult
both desperate and reluctant to leave childhood behind. She’s responsible and focused but her
yearning for the life of travel and writing she had planned for is tangible,
even as it is contrasted with the fierce love she has for her daughter. Her relationship with Sawyer, in all its
forms is always compelling but particularly the “before” sections where Sawyer’s
slowly changing personality is seen through her reluctantly unhappy eyes. When he reappears, Reena’s reluctance to let
him in is both admirable and moving and her tangled feelings are never anything
other than believable.
Sawyer himself is extremely well
written. To an extent, he’s coasted
through life on charm, used to getting his own way. The guilt that he so clearly feels is
understandable but as the story progresses it becomes almost
self-indulgent. On his return, he seems
to be at once changed at also exactly the same, inserting himself into Reena’s
life with an ease and arrogance that is almost insulting and is certainly
infuriating to her. Yet, he is utterly
likable. Cotugno has succeeded in
writing a character who is deeply and realistically flawed yet also entirely
sympathetic. Other characters are also
beautifully and delicately drawn with Reena’s family and friends being
particularly interesting. Reena’s father
and his palpable disappointment is especially well done as is Sawyer’s head-in-sand
mother.
The storyline of How to Love seems at first a well-worn one. Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl has to
decide whether to take boy back – you know the kind of thing. Yet Katie Cotugno has written a nuanced and
accomplished exploration of not only the tangled relationship between Reena and
Sawyer but also their relationships with those around them. Reena’s unconditional love for her daughter
is contrasted with her relationship with a father whose love for her, she
feels, turned out to be extremely conditional.
Equally, Shelby – a character who so easily could have been a
stereotypical loyal best friend – calls Reena on her mistakes, gets mad at her,
forgives her, gets mad again… in a way that shouts of real life
friendships. The issues between Sawyer
and Reena are shown to be messy, their relationship has always been imperfect
but due to the aforementioned characterization of Sawyer, readers will
understand Reena’s anger but also her attraction. So often, particularly with the emergence of
the often ghastly New Adult genre, characters like Sawyer are written as
physically attractive but reprehensible creatures with few redeeming qualities
and a girl who makes excuses for them while hardly knowing them at all. Here, Sawyer’s behavior is never excused away
and Reena’s confused feelings are believable because he’s three-dimensional and
interesting. In short, Cotugno has excelled in portraying the messiness of both
their relationship and all relationships while also reminding readers of why it
can all be worth fighting for.
The writing in How to Love is exceptionally good, Cotugno having a seemingly
effortless knack of finding exactly the right words to portray deep emotion,
particularly in terms of Reena’s unplanned pregnancy. As one who has shared Reena’s experience, all
be it as an adult, her statement that she “spent
those long foggy months sure of nothing so much as the feeling of standing on
the edge of a canyon and screaming, waiting for an echo that refused to come”
reduced me to tears of recognition and understanding. And the writing is all that good. How to Love is one of the standout books
of 2013 and Cotugno is someone who the Sarah Dessen’s and Sara Zarr’s of the YA
world should be watching out for.
There’s a new kid on the contemporary block and she’s hitting it out of
the park.
This review was brought to you by Splendibird. How to Love is available now. Thank you to Quercus for sending us this title to review.
Comments