Taylor Jenkins Reid

A love story about a woman unexpectedly forced to choose between the husband she has long thought dead and the fiancé who has finally brought her back to life

A Novel

One True Loves

Racquel Echeverria

"I don't think you're trying to figure out if you love Sam more or Jesse more. I think you're trying  to figure out if you want to be the person you are with Jesse or if you want to be the person you are with Sam"

debbie ojalvo

It feels so good to flirt. No one ever talks about that. But in that moment, I felt like flirting was the very thing that made the world go around. 

Sarah Campbell

I don’t think that true love means your only love. I think true love means loving truly. Loving purely. Loving wholly. 

She’s such a negative Nancy. My romantic personality is baffled. 

Don't ever let anyone tell you the most romantic part of love is the beginning. The most romantic part is when you know it has to end.

We are two people who are madly in love with our old selves. And that is not the same as being in love. 

Do you ever get over loss? Or do you just find a box within yourself, big enough to hold it? Do you just stuff it in there, push it down, and snap the lid on it? Do you just work, every day, to keep the box shut?

When you love someone, it seeps out of everything you do, it bleeds into everything you say, it becomes so ever-present, that eventually it becomes ordinary to hear, no matter how extraordinary it is to feel.

I decided to no longer wonder what would have happened if things had worked out differently. And instead, I would focus on what was in front of me. I would focus on reality instead of asking myself questions about fictions.

Flirting is probably just as much about falling in love with yourself as it is with someone else. 

I will carry you in my heart always, but I cannot carry your loss on my back anymore. If I do, I'll never find any new joy for myself. I will crumble under the weight of your memory. I have to look forward, into a future where you cannot be. Instead of back, to a past filled with what we had. I have to let you go and I have to ask you to let me go. 

Good things don't wait until you're ready. Sometimes they come right before, when you're almost there.

You know that you will never truly be free of the grief. You know that it is something you just learn to live with, something you manage. 

You start to understand that grief is chronic. That it’s more about remission and relapse than it is about a cure. What that means to you is that you can’t simply wait for it to be over. You have to move through it, like swimming in an undertow. 

I had predicted my life on the idea that I wanted to see everywhere extraordinary, but I’d come to realize that extraordinary is everywhere. 

This is the quote that made me get the book. 

Souhaila

I am finishing up dinner with my family and my fiancé when my husband calls.

You can't capture love in a bottle. You can't hold on to it with both hands and force it to stay with you.

I liked the pain because the pain was you.

I need everybody to understand that this is not "emo". It's real and important because real people really experience this.

Hollow and empty are terrible ways to feel when you're used to being full of joy. But it's not bad when you're used to being full of pain.

Which is nice, because for so long you have felt like you were at the end.

I had predicated my life on the idea that I wanted to see everywhere extraordinary, but I'd come to realise that extraordinary is everywhere.

She read adult books and wrote poetry and had crushes on fictional characters instead of movie stars

When you look back on your own timeline, there's a sharp spike somewhere along the way, some event that changed you, changed your life, more than others.

A moment that creates a "before" and an "after".

honestly, after eveyrthing that’s happened, jesse isn’t emma’s person anymore. i think everyone needs their person at a specific time in their life, and once they change, they find new people, or maybe they go back to their person from another time in their life. emma and jesse were her past, her young adult and teenage life. but emma and sam, are forever, since they were kids they loved each other, and they still do. 

maria garcia 

"Everything is going to be OK," he says to me before I fall asleep. But I'm not sure I believe him anymore. 

Lizett Soto 

When I was a kid, I loved the snow. Then when I moved to California, I used to tell people I'd never leave the sun, that I never wanted to see snow again. But now, I can't imagine a green Christmas and I know that if I left, I would miss that feeling of coming in from the cold. I have changed over time. That's what people do. People aren't stagnant. We evolve in reaction to our pleasures and our pains.

Tallie Packett

“There is nothing more romantic than this. Holding the very person that you thought you lost, and knowing you’ll never lose them again.”

“Just because something isn’t meant to last a lifetime doesn’t mean it wasn’t meant to be.”

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Named a Best Book of Summer by Cosmopolitan * InStyle *PopSugar * Buzzfeed * Bustle * Brit+Co * Parade “No one does life and love better.” InStyle “Earth-shaking…you will flip for this epic love story.” Cosmopolitan In her twenties, Emma Blair marries her high school sweetheart, Jesse. They build a life for themselves, far away from the expectations of their parents and the people of their hometown in Massachusetts. They travel the world together, living life to the fullest and seizing every opportunity for adventure. On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever. Emma quits her job and moves home in an effort to put her life back together. Years later, now in her thirties, Emma runs into an old friend, Sam, and finds herself falling in love again. When Emma and Sam get engaged, it feels like Emma’s second chance at happiness. That is, until Jesse is found. He’s alive, and he’s been trying all these years to come home to her. With a husband and a fiance, Emma has to now figure out who she is and what she wants while trying to protect the ones she loves. But who is her one true love? What does it mean to love truly?

Shannon C

This was my firs TJR read and i’m definitely gonna check out the rest of her books. This book was heartbreaking and for awhile i wasn’t sure who the FMC was going to end up with. Wasn’t looking forward to being happy for one and sad for the other. near the end it was very clear and i was rooting for their happiness. in the end it was a happy ending for everyone and that’s all that matters

This one was so good. I really enjoyed reading this book and while I feel like I’ve heard the plot of this book before in a movie or a different book. I was curious to see what would happen by the end of the book but also predicted what was going to happen too. So while I figured what would happen I still enjoyed the book and the rollercoaster story that I definitely recommend for everyone to read. 

Priscilla Stanfield

i was kinda disappointed reading this, i felt like i shouldve felt more connected to emma but the writing left me feeling disconnected and like i was an outsider looking in. it was hard to feel what was happening and even if the storyline is predictable it couldve been executed better. 

what i DID like was the point of how you can change, multiple versions of you can exist in a lifetime and that is not contradictory at all. two things can be true at once!

Janet Akisanmi

i was kinda disappointed reading this, i felt like i shouldve felt more connected to emma but the writing left me feeling disconnected and like i was an outsider looking in. it was hard to feel what was happening and even if the storyline is predictable it couldve been executed better. 

what i DID like was the point of how you can change, multiple versions of you can exist in a lifetime and that is not contradictory at all. two things can be true at once!

Bria

This went way easier for Emma than I thought it would

Amazing!! Lives up to the hype for sure. 

Zoey Novak

arwen

insert blonde girl crying clutching her throat gif

im team jesse i hate sam feel like hes ugly

hanni

Gabby Trupp

this book breaks you in all the best ways. taylor jenkins reid, you are simply amazing.

Sarah

c’est quand que tjr arrête de me faire chialer toutes les larmes de mon corps ???

chateau

this book is a whole package. 11 out of 10. but one thing if i really could change is, to get a lot more moment with sam, it feels so unfair to me how the majority plot was about jesse than it is about sam. i miss him more now than i ever be. i need some parts of him for me to take home to, to love him more, to praise him, to remembering how selfless he'd be. but yes, other than that, it's magnificent. this book teaches me a lot. like, a lot.

Doris Ivandic 

this book broke my heart. i adore you taylor jenkins reid <3

Ryan 

if this book ended with a polyamorous relationship, i wouldn't be mad

“True love doesn’t always last,” I say. “It doesn’t always have to be for a lifetime.” “Right. And that doesn’t mean it’s not true love,”

Gahhh this was an emotional rollercoaster! I am glad I picked this book again after putting it on hold for almost a year. Very beautiful story that teach me some people are not destined to be with us for all eternity, and even relationships are over it doesn't have to mean we didn't love or care about them anymore; we do, but in different way, because people change, we change. And that's okay.

Syahla Aurel

** spoiler alert **
           Just because something isn’t meant to last a lifetime doesn’t mean it wasn’t meant to be. We were meant to have been.

I think it's predictable who Emma will end up with from the first chapter, which doesn't matter as the conflict was still interesting to read. But Emma's actions confused me like if she's already decided to be with that guy then why is she sleeping with another guy? 🤷‍♀️

Victoria 

A tug and a pull on the heart strings. The audiobook got me good and I like the narrator (she does a lot of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s books)

hilda ☆

“you can’t capture love in a bottle. you can’t hold on to it with both hands and force it to stay with you.” yeah…. tjr you have done it again! 3.75 ⭐️

l ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

what would you do if your husband came back after you thought he was dead? what would you do if he called you while you were at dinner with your new fiancé?


i would have no idea how to react. i got upset with emma for how she went about it, but i can’t even really blame her. she was put in a rough spot but she made it work. i absolutely loved both love interests & i didn’t know who i was rooting for! even now that i know who she ends up with, i’m still not sure if i’m happy about it. the book was a wild journey but i’m so glad i finally got a chance to read it. i ended it with tears streaming down my face 🥲 taylor jenkins reid has done it again

As sappy and predictable this book may be I truly loved it. The immense feelings of love and loss that I felt were quite overwhelming. 

Nathalie Knopf

Hannah

GAWH YES perfect ending would have been livid if it ended any other way then it did, I adore TJR she doesn’t miss and this is a perfect example of that. LOVE

Saya Snyder 

Super fast paced and enjoyable 

Fell in love with all the characters 

A bit boring at times 

Beautiful love story 

I’m wondering why TJR didn’t mention Jesse and Brit in Malibu Rising, I mean he married a surfer!! She could’ve easily added One True Love to her fictional universe. 

Tabea

Kenzi Linton

I’ve attempted to read a few books by TJR before, but this one really captured my attention. This author truly has a way with words. It’s easy to imagine myself in the world of the book, around the characters. The plot of this book is quite intense. Emma’s husband goes missing after being on a helicopter and when she finally moves on, he is found. It had me full of curiosity, wondering what the end result would be. I don’t want to spoil anything, so all I will say is that TJR ended this book perfectly. I was definitely rooting for what happened to happen.

Was a sweet story very predictable though, flet rushed 

Megan caddick

Raven K

*♾/5. this book..I'm so speechless rn. Once I started this, It was SO hard to put down. Everytime I did put it down, I just wanted to pick it right back up again. This story was so beautiful & I'm so grateful that I had the chance to read it. I loved the characters, especially the main character. I..idk I just know that I love this book so much..it was so beautiful and astounding. This is a story that I'll always be thinking about. A story that'll always be with me ❤️‍🩹.

One True Loves A Novel

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