Name: Jazelle H's review of This Used to Be Us by Renée Carlino
Item: This Used to Be Us
Rating: 2
Author: Jazelle H

Renée Carlino

There are two sides to every love story—and every breakup. Get ready for an emotional roller coaster of family, marriage, and divorce that will have you both laughing and crying, from the bestselling author of Before We Were Strangers. After twenty-two years together, Danielle and Alex are getting a divorce. Once fiercely in love, they can barely stand the sound of each other’s voice. Instead of shuffling the kids between two broken homes, Alex and Danielle decide to share a nesting apartment while swapping days with their two teenage boys at the family home. In the apartment, Dani and Alex, on their own, begin to reflect on the last two decades—why they fell in love, and why the marriage fell, spectacularly, apart. With the newfound space and time, they are given a chance to find their autonomous selves again. They both get back in the dating pool, Dani finds major success at work as a showrunner on her own TV project, while Alex faces the challenges of a new relationship. Still, they find they just can’t stay away from each other, and somehow, the distance allows them to remember (for the first time in years) what they used to love about one another. When a family crisis draws them back into each other’s orbit, Danielle and Alex are, once again, put to the test, which leads to a dramatic conclusion that will have readers weeping.

A Novel

This Used to Be Us

Hilda Calderon

❓ #QOTD What's something you've learned about love that you would want your younger self to hear? ❓

🦇 Once fiercely in love, Dani and Alex can barely stand the sound of each other’s voice. In the wake of a fresh divorce, they decide to share a nesting apartment, swapping days there or with their two boys at home. The distance gives them the chance to reflect on the last two decades of their marriage—why they fell in love and why everything fell apart. Dani's collection of albums, covered in notes about their past, reminds them just how much love once bound them together. Are those reminders enough to lead them back toward love?

💜 I first encountered Renee Carlino's writing in 2013, when Sweet Thing was released, and have waited for something new since 2019, after The Last Post. To see her name on Netgalley for this book sparked a rush of excitement, like getting a call from an old friend after a few years of silence. Renee Carlino has always excelled at developing strong, emotionally bound relationships. The relationship between Dani and Alex is filled with history (some of which we get small glimpses of, via Dani's album collection and notes from their past). Dani is an emotionally driven character, and those emotions scream off the page; bitter resentment, heartache over a lost love, and everything in between. I had to put the book down a few times at the beginning, simply out of frustration.

💙 While you SEE those emotions, you don't feel it. Every sentence of this story was Tell, not Show, making paragraphs blocky, sentences slatted. Despite the heavy mess of emotions in this book, you don't emotionally connect with either character. Instead, their animosity toward each other makes it difficult to even LIKE either of them. Given the way the story is set up, with Dani's notes on the albums, there's an amazing opportunity for flashbacks--to Show, rather than Tell us, how love can conquer all. We only get a few of those glimpses, and it's not enough. Instead, the present seems to drag them further apart, before rushing them back together without raw, emotional development. The story could have ended with one of the boys, writing their own note on one of the albums. While I love the full-circle concept of the last chapter, it doesn't feel as powerful or emotional as it could have been. What was one of my most anticipated books of the year is now one of the most disappointing. 

🦇 Major thanks to the author and publisher for providing an ARC of this book via Netgalley. 🥰 This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. #ThisUsedtoBeUs

❝ In the beginning, Alex and I were like two opposite magnets in a drawer. My north to his south. We grew closer and closer together … until we fused. It was then that we became the same, too alike … too close. We were so close, so similar, we started to repel one another. We lost our identities and surrendered to being a couple. To being a mom and dad with no singular identities, no separateness, no autonomy. Now I’m seeing him again from the other side of the drawer and there are so many things I want to tell him. ❞

❝ “You are my Times New Roman. The original, bold and classic.”❞

Jazelle H

🦇 This Used to Be Us Book Review 🦇

Rating: ⭐⭐

❓ #QOTD What's something you've learned about love that you would want your younger self to hear? ❓
 
🦇 Once fiercely in love, Dani and Alex can barely stand the sound of each other’s voice. In the wake of a fresh divorce, they decide to share a nesting apartment, swapping days there or with their two boys at home. The distance gives them the chance to reflect on the last two decades of their marriage—why they fell in love and why everything fell apart. Dani's collection of albums, covered in notes about their past, reminds them just how much love once bound them together. Are those reminders enough to lead them back toward love?

💜 I first encountered Renee Carlino's writing in 2013, when Sweet Thing was released, and have waited for something new since 2019, after The Last Post. To see her name on Netgalley for this book sparked a rush of excitement, like getting a call from an old friend after a few years of silence. Renee Carlino has always excelled at developing strong, emotionally bound relationships. The relationship between Dani and Alex is filled with history (some of which we get small glimpses of, via Dani's album collection and notes from their past). Dani is an emotionally driven character, and those emotions scream off the page; bitter resentment, heartache over a lost love, and everything in between. I had to put the book down a few times at the beginning, simply out of frustration.

💙 While you SEE those emotions, you don't feel it. Every sentence of this story was Tell, not Show, making paragraphs blocky, sentences slatted. Despite the heavy mess of emotions in this book, you don't emotionally connect with either character. Instead, their animosity toward each other makes it difficult to even LIKE either of them. Given the way the story is set up, with Dani's notes on the albums, there's an amazing opportunity for flashbacks--to Show, rather than Tell us, how love can conquer all. We only get a few of those glimpses, and it's not enough. Instead, the present seems to drag them further apart, before rushing them back together without raw, emotional development. The story could have ended with one of the boys, writing their own note on one of the albums. While I love the full-circle concept of the last chapter, it doesn't feel as powerful or emotional as it could have been. What was one of my most anticipated books of the year is now one of the most disappointing. 

✨ The Vibes ✨
🌸 Contemporary Fiction
🌸 Marriage/Divorce
🌸 Second Chance Romance
🌸 Miscommunication
🌸 TW: Miscarriage

🦇 Major thanks to the author and publisher for providing an ARC of this book via Netgalley. 🥰 This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. #ThisUsedtoBeUs

💬 Quotes 
❝ In the beginning, Alex and I were like two opposite magnets in a drawer. My north to his south. We grew closer and closer together … until we fused. It was then that we became the same, too alike … too close. We were so close, so similar, we started to repel one another. We lost our identities and surrendered to being a couple. To being a mom and dad with no singular identities, no separateness, no autonomy. Now I’m seeing him again from the other side of the drawer and there are so many things I want to tell him. ❞
❝ “You are my Times New Roman. The original, bold and classic.”❞

Hilda Calderon &
This Used to Be Us by Renée Carlino

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Hilda Calderon &This Used to Be Us by Renée Carlino

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Hilda Calderon &
This Used to Be Us by Renée Carlino