If He Had Been With Me by Laura Nowlin

If he had been with me, he wouldn’t have died.

Throughout their whole childhood, Finn and Autumn were inseparable—they finished each other’s sentences, they knew just what to say when the other person was hurting. But one incident in middle school puts them in separate social worlds come high school, and Autumn has been happily dating James for the last 2 years. But she’s always wondered what if…

Wow…. What an emotionally charged book.

This story covers everything; friends, family, career choices and most important of all—love. Embedded into a story of growing up, is continuous sadness and great tragedy. The protagonist keeps pushing forward, and the reader watches her grow into a great young adult.

Tragedy and triumph go hand in hand in this story. It is raw, and offers many great lessons for young readers in a non-preachy way.

The book is tied with a neat, tragic knot. It is bittersweet, but much like the tone of the rest of the book, there is more beauty than tragedy. Relationships end, things fall apart, people leave—only for new things to fall into place, new people to enter and new relationships to begin. The only constant is love: for the life you had, the life you have & what will come to be.

Now I will wait impatiently for Laura Nowlin’s next book!

Thanks to Raincoast books for supplying a copy for review.