If He Had Been With Me
Laura Nowlin, 2013
Romance Young adultContemporary fiction
Autumn has loved the boy next door since before she could name it. A story about the enormous weight of the smallest missed chances.
Feels like longing and grief. About love and freedom.
A page from the book
Loving someone so long it stops being a feeling and becomes a body part.
I’ve loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn’t change but grew. It grew to fill the parts of me that I did not have when I was a child. It grew with every new longing of my body and desire until there was not a piece of me that did not love him. And when I look at him, there is no other feeling in me. Laura Nowlin.The novel came out quietly in 2013 and became a bestseller nearly a decade later, when readers on TikTok rediscovered it and would not let it go.
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Questions readers ask
- What is If He Had Been With Me like?
- Feels like longing and grief. About love and freedom.
- What should I read after If He Had Been With Me?
- If you liked If He Had Been With Me, try Where She Went (Gayle Forman), The Lucky One (Nicholas Sparks) and The Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller).
A taste of the feed
What you'd pay again, knowing exactly what it costs.
But I’d do it again. I know that now. I’d make that promise a thousand times over and lose her a thousand times over to have heard her play last night or to see her in the morning sunlight. Or even without that. Just to know that she’s somewhere out there. Alive.
Where She Went · Gayle Forman
When you stop hearing from someone, what story do you tell yourself?
Every now and then, I’d meet a guy and think that we were getting along great, and suddenly I’d stop hearing from him. Not only did he stop calling, but if I happened to bump into him sometime later he always acted like I had the plague. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. And it bothered me. It hurt me. With time, it got harder and harder to keep blaming the guys, and I eventually came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with me. That maybe I was simply meant to live my life alone.
The Lucky One · Nicholas Sparks
To know someone so well that sight becomes optional.
I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.
The Song of Achilles · Madeline Miller
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