Praise for Maybe in Another Life
A People Magazine Pick
Us Weekly Must Pick
Named a Best Book of the Summer by Glamour, Good Housekeeping, USA TODAY, Cosmopolitan, POPSUGAR, Working Mother, Bustle, and Goodreads
“Entertaining and unpredictable; Reid makes a compelling argument for happiness in every life.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Reid makes you think about love and destiny and then shows you the what could have been; I loved every word. A heartfelt, witty, and scintillating journey from one parallel universe to another, Maybe in Another Life takes the concept of fate and makes it tangible and engrossing; I couldn’t put this book down!”
—Renee Carlino, USA Today bestselling author
“Readers looking for a romance with a twist won’t be disappointed.”
—Library Journal
Praise for After I Do
“Written in a breezy, humorous style familiar to fans of Jane Green and Elin Hilderbrand, After I Do focuses on Lauren’s journey of self-discovery. The intriguing premise and well-drawn characters contribute to an emotionally uplifting and inspiring story.”
—Booklist
“As uplifting as it is brutally honest—a must-read.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Taylor Jenkins Reid offers an entirely fresh and new perspective on what can happen after the ‘happily ever after.’ With characters who feel like friends and a narrative that hooked me from the first page, After I Do takes an elegant and incisively emotional look at the endings and beginnings of love. Put this book at the top of your must-read list.”
—Jen Lancaster, New York Times bestselling author
“Taylor Jenkins Reid delivers a seductive twist on the timeless tale of a couple trying to rediscover love in a marriage brought low by the challenges of domestic togetherness. I fell in love with Ryan and Lauren from their passionate beginning, and I couldn’t stop reading as they followed their unlikely road to redemption. Touching, perceptive, funny, and achingly honest, After I Do will keep you hooked to the end, rooting for husbands and wives and the strength of true love.”
—Beatriz Williams, New York Times bestselling author
“Taylor Jenkins Reid writes with ruthless honesty, displaying an innate understanding of human emotion and creating characters and relationships so real I’m finding it impossible to let them go. After I Do is a raw, unflinching exploration of the realities of marriage, the delicate nature of love, and the enduring strength of family. Simultaneously funny and sad, heartbreaking and hopeful, Reid has crafted a story of love lost and found that is as timely as it is timeless.”
—Katja Millay, author of The Sea of Tranquility
Praise for Forever, Interrupted
“Touching and powerful . . . Reid masterfully grabs hold of the heartstrings and doesn’t let go. A stunning first novel.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Moving, gorgeous and, at times, heart-wrenching. Taylor Jenkins Reid writes with wit and true emotion that you can feel. Read it, savor it, share it.”
—Sarah Jio, New York Times bestselling author of The Violets of March
“A moving novel about life and death.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“You’ll laugh, weep, and fly through each crazy-readable page.”
—Redbook
“Sweet, heartfelt, and surprising, Forever, Interrupted is a story about a young woman struggling to find her way after losing her husband. These characters made me laugh as well as cry, and I ended up falling in love with them, too.”
—Sarah Pekkanen, internationally bestselling author of The Opposite of Me
“Taylor Jenkins Reid has written a poignant and heartfelt exploration of love and commitment in the absence of shared time that asks ‘what does it take to be the love of someone’s life?’ ”
—Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, New York Times bestselling authors
“This beautifully rendered story explores the brilliance and rarity of finding true love, and how to find our way back through the painful aftermath of losing it. These characters will leap right off the page and into your heart.”
—Amy Hatvany, author of Somewhere Out There
“Forever, Interrupted weaves a beautiful love story with a terrible tragedy. Told in alternating timelines, each chapter progresses sequentially from two different arcs: one of a blooming, forever love and another of overcoming a sudden, inexplicable loss. Each storyline moves effortlessly and seamlessly through the connected stages, while also emphasizing the strengthening of old friendships and the forging of new ones. Whether told in past or present voice, Reid’s debut is a superb read from start to finish!”
—Romantic Times
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This is a book about Acton, Massachusetts.
So naturally, I would like to dedicate it to Andy Bauch of Boxborough.
And to Rose, Warren, Sally, Bernie, Niko, and Zach of Encino, California.
I am finishing up dinner with my family and my fiancé when my husband calls.
It is my father’s sixty-fourth birthday. He is wearing his favorite sweater, a hunter green cashmere one that my older sister, Marie, and I picked out for him two years ago. I think that’s why he loves it so much. Well, also because it’s cashmere. I’m not kidding myself here.
My mother is sitting next to him in a gauzy white blouse and khakis, trying to hold in a smile. She knows that a tiny cake with a candle and a song are coming any minute. She has always been childlike in her zeal for surprises.
My parents have been married for thirty-five years. They have raised two children and run a successful bookstore together. They have two adorable grandchildren. One of their daughters is taking over the family business. They have a lot to be proud of. This is a happy birthday for my father.
Marie is sitting on the other side of my mother and it is times like these, when the two of them are right next to each other, facing the same direction, that I realize just how much they look alike. Chocolate brown hair, green eyes, petite frames.
I’m the one that got stuck with the big butt.
Luckily, I’ve come to appreciate it. There are, of course, many songs dedicated to the glory of a backside, and if my thirties have taught me anything so far, it’s that I’m ready to try to be myself with no apologies.
My name is Emma Blair and I’ve got a booty.
I am thirty-one, five foot six, with a blond, grown-out pixie cut. My hazel eyes are upstaged by a constellation of freckles on the top of my right cheekbone. My father often jokes he can make out the Little Dipper.
Last week, my fiancé, Sam, gave me the ring he has spent over two months shopping for. It’s a diamond solitaire on a rose gold band. While it is not my first engagement ring, it is the first time I’ve ever worn a diamond. When I look at myself, it’s all I can see.
“Oh no,” Dad says, spotting a trio of servers headed our way with a lit slice of cake. “You guys didn’t . . .”
This is not false modesty. My father blushes when people sing to him.
My mother looks behind her to see what he sees. “Oh, Colin,” she says. “Lighten up. It’s your birthday . . .”
The servers make an abrupt left and head to another table. Apparently, my father is not the only person born today. My mother sees what has happened and tries to recover.
“. . . Which is why I did not tell them to bring you a cake,” she says.
“Give it up,” my dad says. “You’ve blown your cover.”
The servers finish at that table and a manager comes out with another slice of cake. Now they are all headed right for us.
“If you want to hide under the table,” Sam says, “I’ll tell them you’re not here.”
Sam is handsome in a friendly way—which I think might just be the best way to be handsome—with warm brown eyes that seem to look at everything with tenderness. And he’s funny. Truly funny. After Sam and I started dating, I noticed my laugh lines were getting deeper. This is most likely because I am growing older, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s because I am laughing more than I ever have. What else could you want in a person other than kindness and humor? I’m not sure anything else really matters to me.
The cake arrives, we all sing loudly, and my father turns beet red. Then the servers turn away and we are left with an oversized piece of chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream.
The waitstaff left five spoons but my father immediately grabs them all. “Not sure why they left so many spoons. I only need one,” he says.
My mother goes to grab one from him.
“Not so fast, Ashley,” he says. “I endured the humiliation. I should get to eat this cake alone.”
“If that’s how we are playing it . . .” Marie says. “For my birthday next month, please put me through this same rigmarole. Well worth it.”
Marie drinks a sip of her Diet Coke and then checks her phone for the time. Her husband, Mike, is at home with my nieces, Sophie and Ava. Marie rarely leaves them for very long.
“I should get going,” Marie says. “Sorry to leave, but . . .”
She doesn’t have to explain. My mom and dad both stand up to give her a hug good-bye.
Once she’s gone and my father has finally agreed to let us all eat the cake, my mom says, “It sounds silly but I miss that. I miss leaving someplace early because I was just so excited to get back to my little girls.”
I know what’s coming next.
I’m thirty-one and about to be married. I know exactly what is coming next.
“Have you guys given any thought to when you might start a family?”
I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes. “Mom—”
Sam is already laughing. He has that luxury. She’s only his mother in an honorary capacity.
“I’m just bringing it up because they are doing more and more studies about the dangers of waiting too long to have a child,” my mom adds.
There are always studies to prove I should hurry and studies to prove that I shouldn’t and I’ve decided that I will have a baby when I’m goddamn good and ready, no matter what my mother reads on the Huffington Post.
Luckily, the look on my face has caused her to backpedal. “Never mind, never mind,” she says, waving her hand in the air. “I sound like my own mother. Forget it. I’ll stop doing that.”
My dad laughs and puts his arm around her. “All right,” he says. “I’m in a sugar coma and I’m sure Emma and Sam have better things to do than stay out with us. Let’s get the bill.”
Fifteen minutes later, the four of us are standing outside the restaurant, headed to our cars.
I’m wearing a navy blue sweater dress with long sleeves and thick tights. It is just enough to insulate me from the cool evening air. This is one of the last nights that I’ll go anywhere without a wool coat.
It’s the very end of October. Autumn has already settled in and overtaken New England. The leaves are yellow and red, on their way to brown and crunchy. Sam has been over to my parents’ house once already to rake the yard clean. Come December, when the temperature free-falls, he and Mike will shovel their snow.
But for now the air still has a bit of warmth to it, so I savor it as best I can. When I lived in Los Angeles, I never savored warm nights. You don’t savor things that last forever. It is one of the reasons I moved back to Massachusetts.
As I step toward the car, I hear the faint sound of a ringing cell phone. I trace it back to my purse just as I hear my father rope Sam into giving him a few guitar lessons. My father has an annoying habit of wanting to learn every instrument that Sam plays, mistaking the fact that Sam is a music teacher for Sam being his music teacher.
I dig through my purse looking for my phone, grabbing the only thing lit up and flashing. I don’t recognize the number. The area code 808 doesn’t ring a bell but it does pique my interest.
Lately, no one outside of 978, 857, 508, or 617—the various area codes of Boston and its suburbs—has reason to call me.
And it is 978 specifically that has always signified home no matter what area code I was currently inhabiting. I may have spent a year in Sydney (61 2) and months backpacking from Lisbon (351 21) to Naples (39 081). I may have honeymooned in Mumbai (91 22) and lived, blissfully, for years, in Santa Monica, California (310). But when I needed to come “home,” “home” meant 978. And it is here I have stayed ever since.
The answer pops into my head.
808 is Hawaii.
“Hello?” I say as I answer the phone.
Sam has turned to look at me, and soon, my parents do, too.
“Emma?”
The voice I hear through the phone is one that I would recognize anywhere, anytime—a voice that spoke to me day in and day out for years and years. One I thought I’d never hear again, one I’m not ready to even believe I’m hearing now.
The man I loved since I was seventeen years old. The man who left me a widow when his helicopter went down somewhere over the Pacific and he was gone without a trace.
Jesse.
“Emma,” Jesse says. “It’s me. I’m alive. Can you hear me? I’m coming home.”
I think that perhaps everyone has a moment that splits their life in two. When you look back on your own timeline, there’s a sharp spike somewhere along the way, some event that changed you, changed your life, more than the others.
A moment that creates a “before” and an “after.”
Maybe it’s when you meet your love or you figure out your life’s passion or you have your first child. Maybe it’s something wonderful. Maybe it’s something tragic.
But when it happens, it tints your memories, shifts your perspective on your own life, and it suddenly seems as if everything you’ve been through falls under the label of “pre” or “post.”
I used to think that my moment was when Jesse died.
Everything about our love story seemed to have been leading up to that. And everything since has been in response.
But now I know that Jesse never died.
And I’m certain that this is my moment.
Everything that happened before today feels different now, and I have no idea what happens after this.
BEFORE
Emma and Jesse
Or, how to fall in love and fall to pieces
I have never been an early riser. But my hatred for the bright light of morning was most acute on Saturdays during high school at ten after eight a.m.
Like clockwork, my father would knock on my door and tell me, “The bus is leaving in thirty minutes,” even though the “bus” was his Volvo and it wasn’t headed to school. It was headed to our family store.
Blair Books was started by my father’s uncle in the sixties, right in the very same location where it still stood—on the north side of Great Road in Acton, Massachusetts.
And somehow that meant that the minute I was old enough to legally hold a job, I had to ring up people’s purchases some weekdays after school and every Saturday.
I was assigned Saturdays because Marie wanted Sundays. She had saved up her paychecks and gotten a beat-up navy blue Jeep Cherokee last summer.
The only time I’d been inside Marie’s Jeep was the night she got it, when, high on life, she invited me to Kimball’s Farm to get ice cream. We picked up a pint of chocolate for Mom and Dad and we let it melt as
we sat on the hood of her car and ate our own sundaes, comfortable in the warm summer air.
We complained about the bookstore and the fact that Mom always put Parmesan cheese on potatoes. Marie confessed that she had smoked pot. I promised not to tell Mom and Dad. Then she asked me if I’d ever been kissed and I turned and looked away from her, afraid the answer would show on my face.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Lots of people don’t have their first kiss until high school.” She was wearing army green shorts and a navy blue button-down, her two thin gold necklaces cascading down her collarbone, down into the crevice of her bra. She never buttoned her shirts up all the way. They were always a button lower than you’d expect.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.” But I noticed that she didn’t say, “I didn’t have my first kiss until high school.” Which, of course, was all I was really looking for. I wasn’t worried that I wasn’t like anyone else. I was worried that I wasn’t like her.
“Things will get better now that you’re going to be a freshman,” Marie said as she threw away the rest of her mint chocolate chip. “Trust me.”
In that moment, that night, I would have trusted anything she told me.
But that evening was the exception in my relationship with my sister, a rare moment of kinship between two people who merely coexisted.
By the time my freshman year started and I was in the same building as her every day, we had developed a pattern where we passed each other in the hallways of home at night and school during the day like enemies during a cease-fire.
So imagine my surprise when I woke up at eight ten one Saturday morning, in the spring of ninth grade, to find out that I did not have to go to my shift at Blair Books.
“Marie is taking you to get new jeans,” my mom said.
“Today?” I asked her, sitting up, rubbing my eyes, wondering if this meant I could sleep a little more.
“Yeah, at the mall,” my mom added. “Whatever pair you want, my treat. I put fifty bucks on the counter. But if you spend more than that, you’re on your own.”
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