Reviewed by Jasmine Sov, age 18
One True Loves by Elise Bryant
Lenore Bennett is staring her future in the face. Though she’s committed to NYU, she’s still unsure of what she wants to major in—she could never tie herself to just one thing for the rest of her life, and it doesn’t help that her family is full of overachievers. What’s more, her romantic life has gone down the drain. Though her friend Tessa insists that Lenore’s going to have a meet-cute on her family’s upcoming Mediterranean cruise, Lenore doesn’t think so. How could a romantic failure like her ever be swept off her feet? Then, on the cruise, she meets Alex Lee, a hopeless romantic of a guy who seems to have his life totally together. He’s the complete opposite of her, which is to say incredibly annoying. Will their differences pull them together, or push them apart?
Though Lenore has a well-developed character arc, the other characters seem quite static, particularly Alex. It seems like he is there to help Lenore become a more focused person and have greater certainty about her life path—and not much else besides that. This, coupled with the fact that they fell in love with each other within just a few days, made their relationship hard to believe. Lenore herself suffers from a lack of proper communication, which makes her hard to tolerate at times. When misunderstandings arise later in the story, she is quick to jump to conclusions and ends up languishing over her own misery for several chapters—an exasperating stall to her character development. There are good messages about taking control of your life and prioritizing mental health at the heart of “One True Loves”, but its main draw—romance—fails to deliver.
2 stars of 5 stars
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320 pages