How To Love By Katie Cotugno

[amazon_link id=”1782060006″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]’How To Love’ is Katie Cotugno’s debut book.

Serena has secretly been in love with Sawyer for as long as she can remember, but since he started dating her best friend Allie, she has had to find ways to distract herself. That gets difficult in her small town, especially when all she wants is to get out of there and leave for college or travel to far-away places. But when Allie dies and Serena suddenly finds herself together with Sawyer, their relationship is bittersweet and complicated, to say the least. One minute Sawyer is around, the next he’s not. At times he’s so genuine, but there is something off and they never talk about Allie. When Sawyer suddenly ups and leaves their stuffy Florida town, leaving her behind, Serena is devastated and her world is turned upside down, for more reasons than one.

Fast forward three years and we meet Hannah, Serena’s baby girl. Sawyer is the father, but he left town before he found out. Now that he knows, he’s back and wants to part of their lives. But there is so much that hasn’t been said, so much that has happened in between and so much that Serena still wants. Will their love survive the ghost of their past and their life in the future?

When I started this book, I honestly had no clue what it was about. I purely just picked it up, started it and then slightly fell in love with the story.

I try not to be one to judge books, but this book does have a cover that does make it out leap out from the shelves, printed in a rich orange hue and black, it promised that the story would be a rocky one and as I delved into the world of Serena and Sawyer, I discovered that the first love isn’t always the sweetest.

The story is seen from the perspective of Serena, in chapters alternating between before and after. Before being before Sawyer left Serena unaware that she was pregnant and the after is three years later when Serena’s daughter, Hannah is two, as Serena struggles to get over the boy that she had always loved and Sawyer adjusts to suddenly being a father and making amends.

I’m really glad that I impulsively grabbed this book and started reading as it is a worthwhile story. Written in a raw and factual style, it captivates the essence the heartbreak and teenage love down to a T. Serena is an intriguing character, a strong headed young woman, who had a dream of becoming a travel writer and worked hard to reach the grades, but when Sawyer and she become closer, family and school take a nosedive. Sawyer was a complex character that Serena seemed determined to fix. Battling drink and drug problems, he seemed to regularly have his finger on the self destruct button and sometimes he brought Serena down with him, which frustrated me. As Sawyer was a such a charming and caring boy, it was easy to be swept by the handsome musician and every time Serena’s heart would skip a beat with Sawyer, mine sometimes would also, as Katie’s description of the character was so vivid.

In the chapters that followed after, I found that Serena became a different character. Battling tragedy, heartbreak and her fathers disapproval for becoming a mother at such a young age, she became harder, distant and never let her guard down to let others in. Although her love for Hannah was evident and I found these scenes with mother and daughter particularly heartwarming.

‘How To Love’ is an incredibly honest and raw account of first love, the consequences and emotions. Beautifully written about hard subjects, it tackles the issues of life in a gritty and frank style. A story that I consumed in a day, this fresh book is an emotional roller coaster and one that I was sad to get off.

You can buy [amazon_link id=”1782060006″ target=”_blank” ] How to Love from Amazon [/amazon_link] and is available to buy from other good bookshops