If He Had Been With Me – Laura Nowlin

Synopsis

“If he had been with me, everything would have been different…”

Autumn and Finn used to be best friends. Then something happened. Or they shifted. They are now doing their best to ignore each other. Autumn has a boyfriend named Jamie and a close circle of friends. And Finn has become the popular kid at school, the one everyone wants to hang out with.

That doesn’t change how Autumn feels every time she and Finn meet paths, or the mounting, nagging feeling that things could have been different. Perhaps they should be together. But, come August, everything will be different. And as time passes, Autumn will be forced to consider how different her life would have been if they had never split up…

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Review:

Only a few pages into Laura Nowlin’s If He Had Been With Me pdf prologue, readers are greeted with a startling yet intriguing revelation: this is not your normal romance novel. Instead, we learn right away that Finny, the anticipated love interest, died in a strange automobile accident, leaving our narrator Autumn to deal with her guilt. The suspense of knowing the whole circumstances of Finny’s death was a successful hook that forced me to continue reading the novel.

If He Had Been With Me begins with the years preceding the occurrence, following the shocking prologue. Autumn and Finny, childhood friends who formerly had an unbreakable friendship but grow apart as high school begins, are central to the plot. The novel, told from Autumn’s point of view, takes viewers on a journey of an adolescent facing internal and cultural pressures. Autumn and Finny eventually find their way back to each other and fall in love—only to be separated again by Finny’s death, which finally provides readers with context for the foreboding in the prologue that drew them in.

However, the fascinating hook distracts from the otherwise uninteresting content of the novel. The writing was repetitive, which could have been an attempt to explain Autumn’s mental state but ultimately made the novel feel flat. If Nowlin was trying to make Autumn relevant to her readers, she failed miserably, as Autumn’s story felt very redundant.

While I appreciated the brief moments between Autumn and Finny that contributed to their eventual reunion, the entire plot felt senseless. Characters that should have been inconsequential were discussed so frequently that it became tedious. Autumn’s friends’ dull drama wasted too much time away from the primary characters. Autumn’s personality was likewise revealed solely through her interactions with her pals, making her character bland and uninspiring.

However, I was pleased when Autumn and Finny acknowledged their romantic love for each other. Finny’s death at the end of the tale, which I had been anticipating, was heartbreaking. Although the finale was abrupt, the events that followed were intriguing and cloaked in mystery.

This book could have been better without the extraneous characters and turmoil, but it does put a unique spin on the usual childhood best friends to lovers cliche. The book tugged at my emotions and made me miss the characters as if I knew them personally, but it also made me want to skip over several tiresome plot lines. If He Had Been With Me, in my opinion, should only be read once.

About Laura Nowlin

Laura Nowlin graduated from Missouri University with a B.A. in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Laura works at the public library when she isn’t at home agonizing over her own novels. The patrons provide her with plenty of inspiration for her writing. Her musical husband, neurotic dog, and insane cat live in St. Louis.