How to Love

I'm not usually a contemporary romance reader, but OH THE FEELS! First of all, I really enjoyed the format of the story. We start in the "Before" where Reena is fifteen and falling for Sawyer and the "After" where Reena is eighteen and seeing Sawyer for the first time in a couple of years. I really loved the parallel structure there, as though her life was in some ways repeating itself. The voices in the story felt very real despite being somewhat stereotypical at times. No one is so extreme as to become a caricature, but they're all very distinct. I would say in terms of realism, it doesn't get much better than this. Katie Cotugno manages to address a lot of really significant issues surrounding accidental pregnancy in a careful but purposeful way. Religion is addressed. Abortion is addressed. The stigma of being a young teen mother is addressed. I think she manages to do all this without sound preachy or making it the focus of the story, as the real focus is Reena and Sawyer's love story. It was enjoyable and full of feels, and while I still don't think I'm much of a contemporary romance kind of girl, I highly recommend this book!

Reviewed first on: http://stephwonderland.blogspot.com/2015/05/how-to-love-review.html This was breathtakingly beautiful. I loved this story. It was raw and real and reminded me so much of some of my friends back in high school. Katie took a really tough subject and made a beautiful masterpiece out of it. I wish this book was popular back when I was in high school. It may have helped some of the girls from my high school notice what consequences could arise from unprotected sex. Don't get me wrong I love all of my friends' kids. And I am there for them 100% no matter what. And I would be in their shoes if I weren't such a stickler about multiple forms of protection (condoms and the pill). Katie took teenage pregnancy and intertwined it with falling in love and it was staggeringly gorgeous. Reena, the main character, deals with so much after getting pregnant at 16. She deals with the consequences and I think she does really well with everything. Her parents don't help her situation (they don't shun her but you find out exactly how her relationship with her father did not go all rainbows and butterflies after the pregnancy). Sawyer (the baby daddy and the boy she fell in love with) didn't know about the pregnancy. His parents did and they basically shunned Reena out. They had nothing to do with Reena or the baby (Hannah) until Sawyer came back into town. Reena and Sawyer go through a lot of turbulence within this book and it was so great seeing the before and the after. I loved the side characters like Shelby and Allie. I loved seeing the before one chapter and the next chapter was about the after. Katie Cotugno wrote a beautiful story and I will definitely be checking out her future books. If you're in the mood for a contemporary with realistic issues, check this one out. It's a great summery read and you're just bound to fall in love with Reena's story.

I don't think I've ever read a novel in the format that Katie Cotugno setup HOW TO LOVE. It time hops every other chapter from BEFORE the love interest, Sawyer, leaves and AFTER he comes back almost three years later. Cotugno has some skill because I wasn't confused at all with this structure. There were no "wait, what?" moments that so often happen when an author time-hops. And after reading the whole story, I think it really was a great way to shape the novel. There was a build up of emotion and events for each time space, and the more you learn about how things are NOW, the more you want to know what happened in the past to get them there. I also want to give her props for making a really "real" book. Does that make sense? I mean, don't get me wrong, I love book boyfriends and swoony love interests, but you don't get that with HOW TO LOVE. What you get is a real life depiction of how loving someone can be hard. It can down right rip your heart out. But life also comes with forgiveness and misunderstandings and learning experiences. I love how the novel explores, not only her relationship with Sawyer, but also with her girl friends and her own family. I wasn't head-over-heels in love with Sawyer because he didn't do a whole lot of swoon-worthy things. But I could see the connection there, and in real life, sometimes that means more than having the perfect partner. Not only did I love the story and the exploration of relationships, but this was a nice spin on a "pregnancy book". We didn't really see her actually going through being pregnant -- just the before and after effects. I thought this was a unique twist on the subject and I loved seeing the AFTER scenes, especially being a new mom myself :)

How to Love is a book that I wanted to love, even NEEDED to love, but ultimately although I didn’t particularly dislike anything, I also never had the feeling that I HAD to get back to reading it – and now I have to try and explain why… The alternating chapters make sense in terms of the plot, but there is a huge chunk that isn’t covered in the two perspectives, and at times I actually found it difficult to determine if I was in the Before or After stages – I had to flick back to the chapter headings at least twice which was a little disappointing. It’s not that I didn’t dislike any of the characters – I liked Reena, I could see the appeal in Sawyer, and I enjoyed the secondary characters. Reena is, for the most part, a strong, determined and smart girl. She has her whole life planned out and then she falls pregnant, but rather than becoming cynical and jaded, she gets on with caring for her daughter, trying to be a good friend and working a job that although she doesn’t love, means that she’s still got a purpose outside of her daughter. Sawyer isn’t the most likable of male romantic leads – he makes stupid, selfish mistakes, but he also has his own issues. And although his treatment of Reena was unfair, it’s not that he’s a nasty piece of work, he’s messed up and lets silly things lead him down a dark path in life. Between the two of them I felt a fair amount of chemistry, but it definitely wasn’t the epic love story I’d hoped for. What How to Love comes down to is more a study on relationships in varying forms – friendships, romantic relationships and family ties and how they are all intertwined, for better or worse. Reena’s father finds it difficult to cope with the idea of her not living up to her potential and making a mistake, her best friend alternates between being her best friend and being disappointed with her behavior and Sawyer…well he’s hard to penetrate much below the surface as he’s so unemotional and closed off. Although I didn’t love How to Love, I found it a refreshing read – the relationships aren’t perfect, the characters struggle with difficult choices and the plot is, for the most part, not completely predictable.

I loved everything about this book. It was heartbreaking, sad, heartwarming and happy all at the same time. It just felt so real, like this could happen to me and that was a really scary thought. This book just hit me so hard, but I loved it. The writing between two different time periods was really fun to read, as we got to see Reena and Sawyer fall in love twice. It was also heartbreaking because to fall in love twice, they must have fallen out of love at some point too. I would definitely read this book. It was a great read and I found myself engrossed completely in the story.

Why I chose this book: I had read several of my book friend's reviews of this book, and they loved it. I also attended Julie Murphy's release of Side Effects May Vary. While there, she gave away a copy of this book, claiming that it was one of her favorite reads of this year. After reading the synopsis, this seemed like the perfect heartfelt romance that I needed. Three Things You Need to Know: 1. This isn't a typical teen pregnancy book. Do not be deceived. This is not your normal teen fluff novel. This book is filled with humanly flawed characters that make your heart ache. I loved Reena and Sawyer's story so much, because it reminded me a lot of my own. Both characters reveal their stories through a series of flashbacks, unraveling their brokenness down to the core. As the story progresses, you see how they both began to rebuild from their past to become different people, for better and for worse. 2. Quiet feminism in a loud way. One of the things I loved was that Cotugno shows how society handles women and teenage pregnancy. When Reena becomes pregnant, Sawyer jumps ship leaving her to pick up the pieces of her shattered life. Cotugno holds no prisoners when illustrating the shaming that women must endure, while men skip out quite easily. Reena is treated like a failure, a messed up and forgotten project, while Sawyer returns as the prodigal son. 3. Forgiveness and love. There are some tough themes of forgiveness throughout the book. Reena learns that her past doesn't dictate her future, and forgiveness is the only way she can let go of the bitterness she holds inside. I also loved the father/daughter moments that Cotugno throws in that made me weep late into the night. This book does not mess around when it comes to feels. Final Thoughts: I loved this book. I wanted more of Reena and Sawyer's story. I loved them and hated them all because I saw myself in their actions. This was a book that tugged at so many of my heartstrings and left me up at night saying, "Okay, just one more page." Check out more of my reviews at ofspectaclesandbooks.com

Uniquely voiced, heartbreaking, and unbelievably real, Katie's debut will easily make her a household name in YA fiction. I felt every emotion that the characters felt. Both main characters are flawed in such a realistic way that at times I was so angry at both of them for being so DUMB - much like everyone around the two teens watching their entangled lives- but the whole time I was cheering them on against the odds. Sad, triumphant, romantic and riveting- the way every adolescent story should be. A perfect reminder of the fact that life doesn't always happen as planned, but sometimes the detours are totally worth it.

How to Love was frustrating to read. It’s a book about second chance love, which I thought sounded amazing. And it might have been, had Sawyer LeGrande not been an epic waste of time. This book should have been called How to Love A Terrible Person and Ruin Your Life As A Result. I hate to be harsh because the book had promise and wasn’t badly written. I liked the constant jumping from Before to After as we got to understand Reena and Sawyer and how things ended up that way. I kept reading, captivated, wanting to find out what happened between them. How to Love is one of those books that I thoroughly enjoyed reading, but once I figured out the full story, it was a waste of time. The story began with Reena. She was raising her daughter on her own and out of high school. She ran into Sawyer at a gas station and realized that he was back in town for the first time since he left her. The reader had no idea what happened other than Sawyer knocked her up at some point and then left and now he’s back years later. The book switched from After (the baby) to Before frequently throughout the story, so we eventually got the entire picture. Reena’s family wasn’t very happy with the fact that she got pregnant at 16 and her relationship with Sawyer’s parents was nonexistent. She hadn’t spoken to Sawyer since he left, shortly after getting her pregnant. In the Before sections, we found out that she had always had a crush on him since she was a little kid. I am not judgmental and I love some flawed characters. I’m always rooting for the worst kinds of villains in fiction. Not just your typically bad boy, but the ones that are actually problematic, selfish, and sometimes evil. That is NOT why I dislike Sawyer, really. I can grow to love a flawed bad boy character. I promise. But Sawyer had to the be the worst character to have as the love interest and he was so terrible to Reena. Over and over and over again! And she just kept letting it happen! I wanted to slap her the entire time! Reena virtually never spoke up for herself. She was in a relationship with a nice, but generally uninteresting guy. She had a shaky relationship with her parents after having her child. The highlight in her life was Hannah, her daughter, but that was basically it. She took some classes at a college, but it was obvious she had gotten into a much better college and had some set goals before finding out she was pregnant. She dreamed of being a travel writer, but was instead a waitress and part time student. While I understood that things have to change when you have a kid, I was kind of irritated that she let her pregnancy stop her from doing what she wanted. No, she couldn’t go off to a 4 year college and ignore her baby, but she could have at least travelled and wrote a bit and not let her circumstances stop her from finding some sort of compromise and joy in her life. She could have at least tried to mend things with her parents by SPEAKING UP every once in awhile. You’re a mom, Reena, you’re an adult. Get the F up and do something with your life and stop letting everyone around you blame you alone for your circumstances. Rise above them and also stop treating them like your life is now ruined. And then came Sawyer. He had so many problems and he was the kind of guy who made Reena turn into mush and stop being responsible. It was clear that he wanted back into her life and he even attempted to form a relationship with Hannah. It complicated things, especially because she cared about him. But he was terrible. In the Before, he was a drug addict. He took her to parties and scored drugs and just LEFT HER in rooms with strangers KNOWING she was uncomfortable. He flirted with other girls ALL OF THE TIME in front of her. He lied to her in order to not hurt her feelings. He wasn’t the kind of bad boy who was better around the girl he loved. He wasn’t the kind of guy who made her into a better, more well rounded person. He didn’t make her take risks that eventually opened her up in a positive way, like so many bad boys in romantic fiction. There were literally NO redeeming qualities about him. And she just let all of this happen. In the After, he was clean, he was back, and he was willing to be around for her, but there was still this general perception that he really had no responsibilities. Nothing about his past was addressed other than the fact that he wasn’t doing drugs or drinking anymore. Everyone blamed Reena for getting pregnant and even looking Sawyer’s way in the first place and it was generally perceived that it was her fault for getting involved with him. When he came back, that perception was still there as her family warned her not to mess up this time. Which was BS. Where was his slice of blame and responsibility? Also, when Sawyer left, there was no reason for it. Honestly, he just left and I think it was to create a plot device. Later, it was the general idea that he was afraid she would go off to college and leave him. She was good, he was bad. He worried about her leaving him, she worried about him leaving her. So he left first. And then she was pregnant. And they rarely talked about anything important, or those fears could have been alleviated. Why would anyone want to be with someone who made them feel like less of a person? She never spoke up about her feelings or her wants, and he never talked about his issues. They didn’t belong together at all. My feelings about the book are directly related to Sawyer. The fact that he’s supposed to be the main squeeze just made me lose all respect for Reena and not enjoy the way things panned out as a result. A better story would have been her finally finding someone who treated her right that she also could fall for and for her family to support her. It seems as though other readers liked Sawyer and rated the book highly because they didn’t have the same problems that I did. My advice is to decide for yourself. How to Love is a quick read and it’s certainly worth reading. It was written pretty well and dealt with a lot of issues. If you don’t hate Sawyer, I’m sure it would be quite enjoyable.

Je suis tombé sur ce livre au hasard et j ai adoré l histoire est super l héroïne super attachant une très belle histoire d amour je recommande vraiment a toute celle qui l on pas lu

Ugh. This book takes the saying 'all that glitters is not gold' to a whole other level. Rude or not, I had such high hopes for this book and first, I get an old, dishevelled copy (all thanks to Amazon) and second, it's all just pure unorganized, turmoils crap. And you may like this book if you're a fan of stupidity. Because if you're anything like a normal homo sapien who's sound of mind, than you'll stay far away from this book and won't make the same mistake as I did.

I wasn’t expecting anything from this book.... I was so wrong! From the first chapter I was hooked, trapped by the wonderful story and forced to devour it in one day!

Love this book from the first word to the very last. This is an all night read, once you start you won't be able to put it down.

it is a tale of young love and what can happen if it all goes bad and have a kid