A follow up to The Light We Lost, Jill Santopolo explores moving on from a disastrous love triangle in the contemplative and authentic The Love We Found. A perfect book for romance lovers in a literary mood. My The Love We Found review is below!
The Love We Found Review
When I heard Jill Santopolo had written a follow up book to The Light We Lost, I felt skeptical. The Light We Lost came out about 10 years ago, and while I wasn’t at the forefront of the craze around this book, I did read it a few years later while massively pregnant with my first baby. I really enjoyed that story of a woman who was deeply torn between two loves and what was the right thing to do for her life. The writing in that book is so so beautiful–concise and emotional prose that pulls the story along. Both choices are the right choice, and neither choice is right. It’s a really well executed love triangle, and I felt for Lucy the entire way, never really feeling she could make a correct decision. The ending of The Light We Lost is both beautiful and profound–I just felt entirely skeptical that messing around with that ending would be worth it.
For the most part, though, I found The Love We Found to be a worthwhile endeavor. The beautiful writing is back in this story that takes place 10 years after the ending of The Light We Lost. Lucy has had to come to terms with the decisions she’s made along the way, and own up to her mistakes. I don’t want to give away spoilers about either book, but in the last 10 years Lucy has had to navigate her spiritual connection to Gabe while dealing with the fallout of the secrets she kept from Darren that affected their family. Now divorced, she shares custody of the kids with Darren in a relationship that’s both healthy but also realistic. When Gabe’s editor calls Lucy and tells her they are planning a 10 year retrospective about Gabe’s work, Lucy starts digging through boxes to see if she can help. She finds an address on a slip of paper–an address in Italy–and her curiosity gets the best of her. Lucy books a flight to Italy to see what she can discover about Gabe. While there, she meets a handsome doctor, Dax, and Lucy begins an emotional journey to her own wellbeing.
As a standalone, book, I enjoyed this one. Again, there’s something about Santopolo’s writing that is perfect for this subject matter. She writes with brevity, and it allows for really thoughtful contemplation about grief, family secrets, and making the right choices in life for yourself and for your loved ones. The writing also allows this book to feel entirely realistic. Lucy’s a great mom, and there are so many details of her parenting life throughout that feel extremely authentic without feeling forced. I enjoyed these scenes of Lucy as a mom and her interactions with her kids. I thought it was also refreshing how hard she worked to maintain a divorce and try to make the right choices when it came to her ex relationship with Darren. All of these things felt complicated but true.
While I really enjoyed the book overall, the one element that held me back from giving it 5 stars was the romance Lucy enjoys with Dax. I really liked Dax as a character–he’s almost too perfect in some ways as he’s funny, self-deprecating, cares about helping humanity, willing to give Lucy all the time she needs, and has been dealt a difficult hand of grief of his own. But what I remember more than anything in The Light We Lost was how uncontrollable and undeniable Lucy’s relationship with Gabe was–it was the kind of romance that is both longed for but also traumatic. While her relationship with Dax was obviously more mature, I just never felt quite as entranced by her connection to him. He seemed great, and I was happy she had found someone to help her grow emotionally, but I just didn’t have the same level of feeling about him. This is the problem with sequels sometimes–they have to compare to not just their predecessor, but to the reader’s memory of the predecessor. Had I read this book without having read the original, I might have been entirely happy with the relationship between Lucy and Dax and wouldn’t compare it to anything.
I would recommend The Love We Found to romance lovers feeling in a literary mood–this one feels about equal parts literary fiction and romance to me and is definitely not a romantic comedy. It’s a quick read, but it’s impactful too, particularly as it deals with how both Lucy and Darren deal with family secrets. I’d definitely read other books by Jill Santopolo too as I appreciated her talent throughout this story. I ultimately liked both The Light We Lost and The Love We Found, but I’ll always have a special place for the original book. Choosing between these two is a little like picking between Gabe and Darren–and sometimes it’s just best to go with your heart.
My Rating for The Love We Found
4.5 out out 5 stars
My Romance Recipe Pairing
I have the perfect recipe pairing for The Love We Found–pair it with my Cannoli Dip Flight and pick between Lucy’s three loves and three flavors of delicious, creamy cannoli dip! A MUCH yummier decision with no wrong choices!!
Synopsis for The Love We Found
Synopsis (from Amazon):
It’s been ten years. In case you’re out there somewhere—In case you’re listening, I’m here. And I have so much to tell you.
Nearly ten years since he’s been gone, Lucy finds a tiny piece of paper in a box of Gabe’s old photos. An address in Rome. Why did Gabe keep it, and what was he doing in Italy? Lucy buys a last-minute ticket to Rome. Impulsive, but Gabe always brought that out in her.
Lucy is surprised by what she finds, pushing her one step farther to uncover Gabe's secret, and crossing her path with that of Dr. Dax Amstrong. A New Yorker in Italy with Doctors Without Borders, his broad shoulders and sad, intense eyes draw Lucy in. His touch reaches her in a forgotten place—one that no one has neared since Gabe.
But her old life awaits, and an earth-shattering decision—whether to tell her son Samuel the truth about his real father. How can Lucy move forward while she’s rooted in regret? Fate broke her heart in the past. Can finding new love set her free?
Buy The Love We Found for your Kindle
