"The Love that Split the World" by Emily Henry

This is a very recent release that's been getting quite a bit of buzz. I was intrigued to read it because most reviewers who loved it, could not really describe the plot for fear of spoiling it. All I knew going in was that it involved time travel and some magic realism undertones. In the end, I did end up enjoying it, but it definitely did not blow me away.

The main character Natalie is an eighteen-year old Native American girl who was adopted when she was a baby. She, very understandably, struggles with feelings of abandonment despite having a very loving family. She also tries to figure out her place in the world and feels like she does not fit in among the inhabitants of a small Kentucky town where she grew up. She also has another reason to feel different: since childhood, she's had visions of an old lady, whom she got to calling Grandmother. The old lady would randomly appear in her room in the middle of the night and tell her stories: some from the Native American lore, some from the Bible or other texts - all resembling parables containing a deeper meaning or some profound truth about life. The day before Natalie graduates from high school, Grandmother appears one last time and tells her that she has 3 months to save him (we do not know who) and that all the answers are in the stories.

There were several things that I really liked about the book. The main character felt very real to me and I could definitely relate to her. I also liked Natalie's family and the way the relationships were described. Natalie's friendships and her relationship with her ex-boyfriend were very realistically written. I also enjoyed the otherworldly atmosphere and Grandmother's stories. All the time/parallel reality travel was very interesting too.

However, there were several major things that did not quite work for me. One is Natalie's mysterious love interest Beau. I just was not sold that their love was the kind of love that would split the world, or that Beau would inspire that kind of love. They fell in love almost instantly, and Beau's character felt very one-dimensional to me. We keep reading about how physically attractive he is, and all he does is not show up when Natalie expects him to. It just did not feel amazing or magical to me.

The other thing that I did not like was pretty much everything in the last 40 pages or so of the novel. The convoluted quantum physics/time wormhole explanation was exhausting. I also felt the ending kept dragging and then the story abruptly stopped. The author also tried to impart some big message about the love the creator has for us and about the power of love to change the world, but I thought that message got buried in all the parallel reality explanations. So overall, I rated this book at 3 out of 5 stars. I think the main issue for me was that I expected something amazing and the story lacked both the metaphysical depth it was hinting at and the magic of love that I just was not feeling.