"The Versions of Us" by Laura Barnett

This is a heartbreak story, and a life story, and a love story. It's about Jim Taylor and Eva Edelstein and the three different routes their lives might have taken from the day they met onward.

I took notes on this book from the beginning: not because it contained profound thoughts that I wanted to remember, but because Sam read it before I did, and he warned me that it could be tricky keeping the three different versions straight. (He was right. And this is by no means evidence that either of us is remotely stupid.) However, after a while (and with my notes to refer to) it became somewhat easier to keep the threads untangled. Though I still found I frequently had to stop reading and look at the top of the page and remind myself of the current story.

As the years went by, it got to a point where there were just too many marriages, too many deaths, too many affairs, too many children. Though I was able to keep the right ones matched up with the right stories, it was all just too much. My last note reads "P 181: I am getting bored, and it's only halfway over," if that tells you anything. And it was too depressing! Not in the sob-inducing cathartic way, but in the mildly annoying way. One or another of the characters was always mucking everything up, making choices that prevented Jim and Eva from being together, and I kind of reached a point where I figured, you know what? Maybe they're not meant to be together. Rooting for them felt like too much effort.

Remember, though, reading love stories is generally not my thing. Obviously this book was not the one to change my mind.