REVIEW for If He Had Been With Me

Thank you so much to Sourcebooks for sending me an ecopy of this book.

TITLE:            If He Had Been With Me

AUTHOR:      Laura Nowlin

GENRE:        YA

RATING;       

As an adult, I have found myself at times doing the ‘what if’ game – in fact,  over the last few years, I had the opportunity of living the ‘what if’ in a very personal way and found myself asking pretty much the same questions about the boy I grew up with and lost touch with over the years. 

The storyline was conflicting for me because I am one of those people who believe that your life is pre-destined, that everything you did or are going to do is already written – which basically means that choice is an illusion.  While I believe this to be true, I HATE IT because I am such a control freak who needs to believe that I can ‘fix’ anything and that everything should be on my terms.  So, this book challenged me on many levels, which is not a bad thing. 

I feel that the job of a good writer is to definitely be able to tell a good story, but also to push the readers to think and reflect on what they are reading.

If he Had Been With Me did exactly this for me.

While some have argued that this book was more character driven, I would have to disagree in some ways.  I believe that the author meant for destiny to be the one driving the characters and not the other way around.

This was a fast read and it is not particularly cheery and uplifting – but it does pose some interesting questions and forces us to ask ourselves just how important that other person is to us.

If you are looking for a book that will make you think, then this is the perfect one for you.  The author has a nice smooth writing style that I enjoyed and managed to build a story that stands on its own.