If He Had Been with Me

“You think it is okay for you to be sad every day. But it is not okay. And you do not deserve it.”

This was so devastatingly beautiful and I feel like it is going to be a story that I will think about for a long time.

I can't actually express how this story actually made me feel. Autumn was such a perfect main character and was so easy to feel attached and connected to.

This story was real and rough around the edges. It showcased what life is really like. It's not a fairy tale and no one is perfect. It managed to captivate so many heavy topics in a way that felt so personal and raw.

I couldn't stop myself from crying because the way the characters thoughts and feelings were written on the page just felt so authentic to me.

I absolutely loved this.

3.5/5 ⭐
I recently reread this so that I could refresh my memory before reading the sequel and I have some thoughts. I don't like the writing. Some people like that it's super simple but everyone talked so grammatically correct and it kind of took me out of the book. I forgot about pretty much everything that happened in the book so most of the “plot twists” were a surprise all over again which was fun. But it felt like nothing really happened for a while as we were introducing characters and going through the high-school drama that I didn't care about eg. the whole table fight thing and all the other couples. It felt like the author was like “what if I wrote a book where one of them tragically dies at the end. That would be cool. Now what to put before that?” Ya know? I wish we got more of Finn and Autumn together. I see why we didn't but it was still disappointing to read all of this buildup of them liking each other and all the relationship drama for him to just die a day after they got together. Finn's death had me in tears. The first time I remember being kind of disappointed and not at all emotional but it hit different this time. I don't like that she wrote in the whole cheating on Sylvie plot point. I get that its “for the drama” or whatever but it still made me feel weird because I hate cheating trope. The ending with the whole suicide attempt pregnancy thing was a decent ending and I was satisfied. It didn't need a sequel just saying.

This book would have been everything to me if I read when I was in high school. Yet, it was still impactful. I read this in one setting and could not get over how engrossing and real it was. We follow Finny and Autumn throughout high school with flashbacks to their childhood and watch them experience life together and how they grew apart. Autumn was relatable, but I LOVED Finny. While it is foreshadowed in chapter 1 what happens in the end, it was still completely devastating. To think that at that point Finny and Autumn would have finally been together after so long. This was the ultimate friends to lovers/right person wrong time story. Is she pregnant???? Did she survive her grief???? I'm glad I read this when I did, I couldn't imagine waiting for a sequel. But I cannot wait to read from Finny's POV and get the entire flushed out story