Hello, internet people! The semester is winding down, so I’m finally doing some non-assigned reading again. This week, I’m bringing you my review of Leslie Cohen’s debut novel, This Love Story Will Self-Destruct, which will be available on January 28th, 2018.

(Full disclosure: I received an eGalley of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review)

This book follows something of a nontraditional structure for romance. The book opens with a brief narration from each character about their relationship, then flashes back to where the story began. This makes it immediately obvious who ends up with who.

As a result, the period of time where one character is actively dating someone else felt in many ways like a weird waste of time. For a while, I found this frustrating,, but as I kept going I saw the value of character development and laying the seeds for future plot points.

The back-and-forth narration between main characters Eve and Ben worked fairly well and the voices were distinct. It was fun getting both sides of the story, which isn’t as common (though certainly not unheard of) in a love story. The choice to bring Ben’s narration back only around the halfway point was a bit of an odd one, and I do wish we’d gotten to see a bit more of what he was doing for the beginning of the book so that his character was developed as well as Eve’s.

There were a few times when I thought I could predict the plot, but Cohen surprised me and took things in different directions than I expected. This made the book a refreshing and engaging read. For a debut especially, I was quite impressed with This Love Story Will Self-Destruct and definitely recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a love story with a less typical structure.