Books Read: Katie Cotugno - How to Love

This is a love story. But it's not what you think. This is not a first kiss, or a first date. This is not love at first sight. This is a boy and a girl falling in messy, unpredictable, thrilling love. This is the complicated route to happiness that follows. 

This is real. This is life. This is how to love. 

Before: 
Reena has loved Sawyer LeGrande for as long as she can remember. But he's never noticed her, until one day... he does. They fall in messy, complicated love. But then Sawyer disappears from their humid Florida town, leaving a devastated - and pregnant - Reena behind. 

After: 
Three years later and there's a new love in Reena's life: her daughter Hannah. But just as swiftly and suddenly as he disappeared, Sawyer turns up again. 

After everything that's happened, can Reena really let herself love Sawyer again?

Serena, or Reena to her friends, had always had a crush on her childhood friend Sawyer but she'd kept her feelings hidden especially when he was dating her best friend Allie.  But then one night he turns up at her door and the intricacies of their friendship changes but just as their relationship was developing he disappeared without a trace.  Shortly afterwards Reena discovers that she's pregnant...

Fast forward a couple of years and Reena, living at home with her daughter Hannah, still works in the family restaurant, goes to college part-time and is now dating again.   But her whole life is turned upside again when Sawyer just as suddenly re-appears opening up old wounds.  

The story unfolds through two time frames, flashbacks to then and now, so we get to see how their relationship first developed and how they both deal with their conflicted feelings now that Sawyer has returned.  Will they be able to resume their relationship or has too much time passed to go down that path again? 

I knew when I read the blurb that I was considerably older than the target audience for How to Love so I have to confess to being a little apprehensive about reading it and my fears were justified.  It was a so/so read for me, it wasn't bad but it wasn't great either.  

I'd like to thank Quercus Books for sending me a copy of this book to review.  Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback