(For all the grammar police, I know the headline should use whom. “Can’t Help With Whom You Fall in Love” sounds all kinds of wrong though, so “Can’t Help Who You Fall in Love With” will have to do.)

When I met my late husband Dennis, he lived in New York, and I lived just outside of Chicago. (I’ve told the genesis of our love story in What’s Your Meet-Cute? and A Celebration of Dennis, for His Birthday.) While some people can do the long-distance relationship thing, New York to Chicago wasn’t geographically desirable for either one of us.

The first time I flew to New York to meet Dennis in person (we met in a chat room; go read the other posts 😉), my over-protective younger brother was not happy about it. He was worried despite the fact that I told him I was being safe. I had a hotel near the airport. I wasn’t going to do anything stupid. But I also was confident in what kind of person Dennis was, and I think I’m a pretty good judge of character.

I told my brother that going to New York wouldn’t make me less safe. I could meet someone at a local bar, and they could follow me to my car, hit me over the head, and leave me for dead in an alley somewhere. The Internet just widens the playing field. In case you’re wondering, that did not make him feel better. Shocking, I know.

Within about five weeks of meeting in person, Dennis and I were married. You can’t help who you fall in love with, but you can help what you do about it. And Dennis and I wanted to be together, so he moved to Chicago. He didn’t love it. 😂

He missed New York City…a lot. He missed being able to get his favorite breakfast of a bagel and a donut from a street vendor in Manhattan. He never did find a mechanic he completely trusted. And we definitely couldn’t get the Trinidadian food that he loved so much and could get easily in New York. We still visited New York quite often. His mother and sister live there, so we visited at least once every couple of years, and Corinne and I have been back once since he passed.

He came to Chicago—and he stayed in Chicago—for me because you can’t help who you fall in love with. 🥰

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Book Review

⭐⭐
2 Stars for Only Love Can Hurt Like This by Paige Toon

400 pages
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Publication Date: April 25, 2023
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and G.P. Putnam’s Sons in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher’s Description

An earth-shattering secret. A life-changing love story.

When Wren realizes her fiancé is in love with someone else, she thinks her heart will never recover.

On the other side of the world, Anders lost his wife four years ago and is still struggling to move on.

Wren hopes that spending the summer with her dad and step-family on their farm in Indiana will help her to heal. There, amid the cornfields and fireflies, she and Anders cross paths and their worlds are turned upside-down again.

But Wren doesn’t know that Anders is harboring a secret, and if he acts on any feelings he has for Wren it will have serious fall-out for everyone. Walking away would hurt Wren more than she can imagine. But, knowing the truth, how can she possibly stay?

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Main Characters:

• Wren – 33-year-old architect who lives in England, visiting her father and his wife in a small town an hour outside of Bloomington, Indiana, after her fiancé breaks off their engagement because he has feelings for someone else
• Bailey – 27-year-old event planner, Wren’s half-sister, married to Casey who is a golf pro in the same town as Bailey’s parents
• Anders Fredrickson – 35-year-old racing engineer who lives and works in Indianapolis; concerned about his brother Jonas’s mental health, so he’s been spending more time than normal at the family farm
• Jonas Fredrickson – 37-year-old farmer; expected to take over the family farm, which has been passed to the oldest son for generations; their father is resistant to change and avoiding retirement; the Fredrickson property is next to Wren and Bailey’s father’s property

I had high hopes for this book based on the description and the setup. This was my first by this author, and the book has plenty of great reviews. There are also a few that agree with my take on it, so I don’t feel like I’m totally in the minority.

Let me give you the gist.

Wren’s back story: Wren’s parents met while traveling in Europe in their twenties. Her mother was from England, and her father was from the U.S. With his visa expiring, they moved back to Arizona, got married, and had Wren within a year. Her father Ralph worked as a groundskeeper at a local university and began an affair and fell in love with Sheryl, a professor. When Sheryl became pregnant, Ralph chose to stay with her and the new baby (Bailey), and they moved to Bloomington, Indiana, to be closer to Sheryl’s family. Wren’s mother took then six-year-old Wren and moved back to England.

Wren’s current story when the book begins: At 33, Wren is a successful architect in Bury St. Edmunds, planning her wedding to Scott. Strolling through the park one day, she sees Scott sitting with one of his employees. While they’re not touching one another, the scene seems intimate. Several months later, Scott tells Wren that he hasn’t acted on it, but he’s in love with Nadine. Wren’s mother suggests that she take some time away from their small town and go to visit her dad in Indiana.

The similarities between Wren’s relationship and her parents’ relationship make her situation more painful. While she knows her dad loves her, he’s more affectionate with Bailey, and Wren feels very much like a third wheel to both her dad and Sheryl.

The books takes us through the summer with Wren bonding with Bailey, getting over her broken engagement, learning about Sheryl’s missteps as a stepmom, and renovating an old Airstream camper that sits on the property from a previous owner. She and Bailey befriend the neighbors’ two sons, Jonas and Anders, and Wren and Anders develop feelings for one another.

Great basis for a friends to lovers kind of story in a small farm-town setting. The story line lends itself well to a dual point of view between Wren and Anders, but the author definitely did not take advantage of that. Anders returns to Indianapolis several times over the course of the summer, and I think it would be great to hear his side as opposed to Wren thinking, Anders must be doing this or that now.

The author threw in one chapter from Anders’ point of view, and without any other chapters like that, it didn’t make sense. I know why she did it based on the storyline in that particular chapter. All the more reason to have used that POV method throughout.

Finally, and it’s very difficult to describe, something just felt awkward or “off” about the interactions between all the characters. Let me give you some examples.

***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***

Wren misreads everyone all the time. She’s 33 years old with absolutely no emotional intelligence. She talks as if she barely knows her dad, his wife, and her half-sister but then mentions that the last time she was in America was just two years ago. When she and Bailey meet Jonas and Anders at a bar, she describes the autographed photos on the walls, and tells us how devastated her father, Sheryl, and Bailey were about missing a presidential hopeful on a campaign tour. At one point, Sheryl mentions that she made a lot of mistakes when Wren was young. All of these things imply that they all actually spent time together and that they spoke relatively regularly. Wren makes it sound like she rarely interacted with them.

The number of times Wren remarked about Anders’ mood and then realized she had it wrong was mind-boggling. At one point, they’re in the Fredrickson’s storm cellar because a tornado is coming, and she mentions that he doesn’t give any indication that he’s pleased to see her again. Jonas is still outside, and there’s a tornado coming! But she’s expecting some indication that Anders is interested in her?

Shortly after in the storm cellar, during the tornado, Jonas sits on an old couch they have in the cellar, and he’s wet since he had been caught in the storm. His mother scolds him about not putting a towel down (it’s a storm cellar 🤔). When he says she never “gave a crap” about the couch before, she tells him to watch his language because they “have guests.” It’s a storm cellar…and they’re in the middle of a tornado! They’re not hosting a dinner.

Anders seems overly anxious about Jonas’s mental health, to the point where he seems afraid that Jonas is going to take his own life. Yet there is nothing to indicate that Jonas is contemplating anything like that. I get it. There are countless examples of people who choose suicide when friends and family had no clue, but if Anders is worried about that, you would think he’s seen some indication, and the reader is never clued in.

Don’t even get me started on the fact that Wren goes bowling and power washes an old Airstream in a dress. 🙄

And when it comes to Anders’ big secret, I didn’t figure out the twist ahead of time, so kudos to the author for keeping that under wraps. I thought maybe he was driving the car during the accident when he lost his wife, and I think I would have preferred that to the actual secret. But I also didn’t care for how the story around Anders’ past developed. His in-laws (especially his mother-in-law), the secrecy—it was just…off.

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