(Warning! There are spoilers ahead)
This book was a romantic rollercoaster, with an ending I did not expect at all. It was so beautifully written throughout and kept me on the edge of my seat wanting to know what was going to happen with the main characters. We, at the start of the book, are introduced to Dexter and Emma who have met and slept together on their graduation night 15th July1988. Now, every 15th July from this date we look back on Dexter and Emma and where they are in life for 20 years. In all honesty, the book was amazing all the way up to the end.
The start of the book is brilliant, we are introduced to Dexter and Emma, a complete mismatch of a pairing who have somehow met on their graduation night and awkwardly got together. Dexter in reality doesn't really like Emma to start with, and sees her as an awkward girl who is not at all his type but as they talk more through the night he begins to like her - and a friendship lasting years is formed. The two go through immense up and downs throughout the novel causing them to be casted away from each other and leaving you as the reader yearning for them to be together. We see them in distance when Dexter travels and Emma begins to live in London working for a theatre company, Emma and Dexter meeting partners and staying with them only to end up breaking up and every year the distance between them and their friendship growing larger. Dexter faces a drug addiction whilst working in show business and Emma stops wanting to be friends. All the while you just want them to finally get together.
When they get older and all their friends are getting married, they begin to meet their partners they believe they're going to marry and Dexter even proposes to his girlfriend Sylvie who is pregnant. Emma rejects her long term boyfriend (Ian's) proposal and ends up single again. Dexter and Sylvie get married, and have a daughter but it turns out that Sylvie has been having an affair with Dexter's long time friend Callum - as their marriage breaks up, Emma and Dexter reconcile in Paris where things begin to heat up.
Throughout the whole of the book, all I wanted was for Dexter and Emma to end up together, it was the only thing that felt right. You could tell there was a passion and yearning between them and that they were destined to be together. Nicholls throws them around and pairs them with other partners, increasing your anger because all you want is them to be together! It's only at the end of the book that he finally allows them to become a couple, and we see how well they go together. When they end up together, you just want them to have the longest and healthiest relationship ever, and for a while it seems like they will, until Nicholls completely spoils it.
It has never ever angered me more at how a character has died in a book, Although sometimes characters deaths are not deserved, I can often deal with it, but in this book it angered me to no end. The build up to their relationship is beautiful and throughout the novel you can feel the tension between the two. You just know that they belong together, and when they finally do it's like a physical relief all until Emma's death. Dexter and Emma get married, and both families approve of them as a whole. Emma wants to start having children, and so they go to look for a house until Emma's completely untimely death. I honestly can't even put into words how upset I was. I literally threw the book on the floor, Nicholls ends Emma's life with the simple sentence of 'And in that moment Emma Morely was dead.' How on earth can a characters death just end in a line, there was no beauty or emotion to it - it was so heartless! I ended up not reading the rest of the book, because of her death being so abrupt and not sitting right with me, and then with Dexter moving on so fast.
It was like actual torture for the book to end this way, and I must admit I have never really been so angry at the way a book has been written and ended. It was so beautifully written throughout, with the contrasting perspectives of both Emma and Dexter, that for Emma to die in the way she did it made the whole book seem pointless and had no meaning, because in reality what was the book building up to?
I would still recommend it as it is an amazingly written book, but be prepared to be extremely angry at how it turns out because it will not be in the way you want. Overall I think the book deserves a 6.5/10, as most of the points are knocked off because of the terrible terrible ending that completely ruined the book.
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