Like I Can Love
Kim Lock
Fairlie gets a phone call that changes her future and her past. Her best friend Jenna has just killed herself, despite everything in her life appearing perfect. In the pages that follow, questions of family and love are explored as fluid concepts that everyone sees differently.
The blurb of the book suggests that “a letter. In Jenna’s handwriting. Along with a key.” is the most important driving force behind the novel. In fact though there is so much more to the story. The interactions of the characters and the flipping time periods do a much better job of exploring the story.
There are so many layers of story here. It’s almost impossible to explore the character development without giving something key away. The way the novel is set up, things are revealed tantelisingly until you don’t realise what is happening, then BAM. It gets you with all those clues you should have seen.
I felt myself inside Fairlie’s flat, but struggled to see the inside of Jenna’s house. I wonder whether this was deliberate by the author – Jenna’s hidden life, and Fairlie’s rather messy one. The vineyards was beautiful and I could relate that to my own experiences of wineries and their beautiful scenery.
I’ve never thought of someone having a phobia about death before. It makes the end even more ironic, or perhaps melodramatic, or perhaps just leaves the reader to think more deeply about the story. Nothing is sacred.
At times this novel dragged, so I can’t give it 5 stars. A well-deserved 4 stars from me.
There are some interesting things going on in this novel. If you wait too long after reading something, you lose those things. It’s not that I’ve waited too long, its that I’ve read about 5 books in the mean time. Oops?
The twist in this novel is that you don’t know there is a twist. I’m really not sure how long Will’s situation has been the way it is, but you get the snap-shot of when things are really changing. Will is very skittish, but cute all the same. Julian is not cute. He’s just annoying and pushy and a great friend.
I’m not certain what kind of audience this book is aimed for. Maybe for a tween girl? Someone who just wants to dip into a book, be inspired, then come back out. It took me maybe 5 minutes to read it, and I wouldn’t see myself buying the book myself.
I feel like it is possible that this novel had too many themes crammed into it, but instead I felt like they all balanced themselves out. It read exactly like the protagonist was thinking and feeling. Ash struck me as so confused, and yet so cute. And don’t be put off by the ‘teacher crush’ thing. It’s not a big deal, its just used as a prop for forwarding Ash’s character development.
Ah, the ending. It tidied things up nicely. Perhaps too nicely. Worlds never end like that. So it could be unexpected, except the minute a couple of people do their ‘expose’ thing, then it becomes obvious what is happening around that, and it proves to be inevitable. It was already so unpredictable, in its own way it was predictable.
All the characters feel one-dimensional, which is ironic, given that pretty much only 2D things can slip through the current crack used by Elliot and Madeline. I’m sure they could all pass through too!
This novel started so slowly and got so confusing at times that I couldn’t work out what was going on. I struggled to get into it, and found myself easily distracted. Near the end, I was finally hit with a shock of ‘wow’, but it only lasted a couple of pages.
I admit I had difficulty remembering which character was which for the majority of the novel. Not the main characters, but the side ones (haha). The abbreviations of their names tripped me up.
Elspeth goes from a lonely loner to someone who dares to have friends. Funny how losing everything seems to do that to a person. She progresses rapidly from someone only concerned about saving herself to someone who can and will help others. It’s that transformation that brought me back to this novel over and over again.