Reviewer: Angie
Rating: 5 Stars
I finished this book at 2AM because I just couldn't put it down. It's taken me a few hours to get over the book hangover so I could write this without sobbing. Marnie's story was exciting, eye-opening, thought-provoking, and heartbreaking. Be ready for a roller coaster of emotions with this story.
It takes place in two time periods, alternating each chapter, but somehow the two times in her life, 15 years apart, are connected by one incident. The first is when she is 19 and home from college. She has a summer romance that takes her breathe away and changes her life, her future. Fifteen years later, now a wife to a wonderful man and mother to two boys, she is brought back to that summer when a tragedy, again, enters her life. She realizes she has to face the past in order to live in the present.
I received a copy of this story in return for an honest review. This is the first of Stephanie Elliot's books I've read, but, honestly, it will NOT be my last. It moved me so much that I reached out to her to tell her how amazing it was. I can count on my hand how many times I have done that with authors I have never read before. She has a new fan in me!
At 19, Marnie plunged into first love with Joe, a guy who was completely wrong for her. Their romance was fast and exhilarating and like nothing Marnie had ever experienced or understood. Just as quickly as it began, it was over, with no explanation. He left her with unanswered questions and unexpected feelings of loss and regret, and a quiet grief she would carry with her for the next fifteen years.
When Joe returns, Marnie is a 34-year-old wife and mother to two rambunctious little boys, who is slowly healing from a devastating loss. All the emotions she suppressed from the past fifteen years surge to the surface, threatening to ruin her marriage and destroy her family. She'll need to confront the one person who hurt her the most to realize that love and loss sometimes go hand in hand.. and that you have to live with some of your toughest choices for the rest of your life.
A Little Bit of Everything Lost is part coming-of-age/part love story. It's a story about a woman desperate to make peace with the past. It's for all women who have ever experienced the magnitude of first love, whether it was a lasting bond or a fleeting moment. Because first love - while it might not have been the best love - is a love none of us ever forgets.
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