When you complete the last page of someone’s debut novel and find yourself stunned into a feeling of complete connection with the story. When you shake yourself loose from the spellbinding enchantment induced by someone’s written words. When the first thing you do is find said author’s website to see if there is anything new in the works. That’s when you have discovered something unique, special, inspiring, and every other positive adjective that might be associated with a literary offering.
The title on the cover pulled me into the fold for unsuspecting reasons. I love to communicate. It’s only that I sometimes struggle to do it through spoken words. The idea of talking at night, during a time of the day when darkness has a way of keeping those intimate thoughts closest to you in a safe way, it hooked me. How two people, Will and Rosie, could be so different yet exist on the same wavelength for decades supplies a type of hope that’s impossible to verbalize but so incredibly simple to feel.
Permit me to dive into a scientific analogy. It’s as if their individual paths through life are slightly out of phase waves that intersect at distinct points through life before moving farther away again, rinse and repeat. But as each gets closer to the shoreline, they intersect more often and in more meaningful ways, until they crash onto the shore together and coexist in an ebb and flow of life that’s surreal, magical, and destined.
From a composition point of view, the manner in which this story was written by Ms. Daverley is brilliant. There’s not a single quotation mark or piece of traditional dialogue in the entire book. It took a few pages for me to get used to it, but I must admit, I enjoyed this third person approach to character interaction much more than I anticipated. It eliminated any distractions with semantics of the English language. And perhaps that fits well with the everything else between the two covers of this book. There are so many hidden gems nestled between the thoughts and actions of each character. But perhaps the most nuanced and important to me is giving yourself the grace and time and permission and courage to truly think about what you need in life, to look back on the path you’ve traveled and see it as worthy, to you and no one else.
Each of the characters intersect in compelling ways that support not only the overarching theme but so many other ones that transform this single story into three or four five-star stories. Do you know those moments where you are reading or experiencing something, and you just have this profound thought that occupies everything in your mind for a brief glimpse? Maybe it’s just me that has these types of ruminations, but they are impactful and important and akin to the essence of your soul shouting at you to wake up and pay attention. Well, I had a bunch of those moments while reading this story, but that isn’t the most astonishing thing about it. What magnified that feeling of a building wave into something like a tsunami was the fact that as soon as I was thinking these things, I read them through the author’s words immediately thereafter. Most people associate a tsunami with drowning, but as is the case with most words, it’s how they approach you and permeate your outer shell that matters most. These words were refreshing, cleansing, validating, and important.
I had this book on my Christmas wish list this past year but didn’t receive it, so I purchased it in digital form to read while I was on the go. That was a blessing and a curse. I couldn’t put it down. Just one more chapter, just one more of those moments where everything about what I was thinking made sense because of what someone else wrote. This will be one of those novels that exist in both digital and printed form on my bookshelf. It’s that good and that important for me to hear the messages shared in this book, again and again. Whether through talking or writing or singing or painting or whatever manner of self-expression feels right to you, this story is like coming home for the first time. And maybe it even is… the first time.
Dave’s Rating: ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️
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