Book Review: Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Book #93 of 2022:

Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid

This 2013 debut is the fourth Taylor Jenkins Reid book that I’ve read, and the first one that hasn’t really wowed me. The premise is certainly designed to tug at heartstrings — a young woman is widowed not even two weeks into her marriage — and that section of the story does so effectively, capturing the universality of sudden grief and making it easy to imagine ourselves in the protagonist’s awful situation. But the novel also contains a flashback timeline that alternates with the present chapters to explore how the couple originally fell in love, and I’ve found the characters there to be utterly insipid in their specificities. (She’s a 26-year-old librarian who doesn’t know the meaning of the words “supernova” or “macabre.” He’s a pushy whiner who’s hiding the relationship from his family. They each make a few lightly bigoted remarks, and get married after knowing one another for only six months.)

At least the speedy romance allows the entire plot to unfold over the course of one calendar year, which is a neat little structural flourish. And I do have sympathy for the older version of the heroine, especially in her arc of belatedly meeting and getting to know her mother-in-law. But it’s hard to look past how unlikeable Ben and Elsie are before his death, so although I can see the authorial talents that the writer would hone for subsequent works, I’d have to say they’re in pretty rough form here overall.

[Content warning for disordered eating, racism, fatphobia, and slut-shaming.]

★★★☆☆

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