It’s a story that people can think back and say, “That was me. She captures the teenage voice in a way that people can’t help but relate to the: the misunderstandings, the things left unsaid, old friendships giving way to new. What made them real was the fact that they were a constant theme throughout the novel, impacting Autumn in ways that she didn’t always understand. Nowlin doesn’t shy away from discussing some difficult topics, like depression, familial troubles, the loneliness that teenagers too often feel and the sex they sometimes regret having. While she may use flowery language, it doesn’t hide what Autumn feels, but in fact gives it all the more weight. It’s with this perfect prose that Nowlin cements herself as an author. And when I look at him, there is no other feeling in me.” It grew with every new longing of my body and desire until there was not a piece of me that did not love him. It grew to fill the parts of me that I did not have when I was a child. Nowlin writes, “I loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn’t change but grew. It’s about an all-consuming, first-love that you can’t ignore. It showed the deep connection that existed between Autumn and Finn, how they got to where they were today, and the people they were becoming. While it could have been confusing, Nowlin aligns these flashbacks perfectly to reflect the changes in the present. Written from Autumn’s perspective, the novel takes place in the present, with stories from the past interspersed throughout. What if they had stayed friends? Been each other’s first loves? Been each other’s family like old times? But they will always wonder about the what ifs. What follows are the different paths that Autumn and Finn take through high school.

The novel opens with the knowledge of how things will end, and the reader will spend the rest of the book trying to escape the truth of what will happen, to no avail (prepare for complete and utter emotional annihilation with a box of tissues). Until middle school when they make friends with different crowds. In the back of their minds, they are always thinking about the other, wondering if they can find each other again.Īutumn and Finn’s moms were best friends, so when they both got pregnant at the same time, it was natural for their children to be best friends too. It is the story Autumn and Finn, best friends since before they were born, they lost touch somewhere along the way and forgot how to be friends.

“If He Had Been With Me” is Laura Nowlin’s debut novel. There is so much possibility, anxiety, and sadness rolled into that two-letter word, and it encapsulates the entire spectrum of human emotions. If you looked up the saddest word in the dictionary, there would be a special little entry for the word if.

I he had been with me