{Release Day Review} Everything After by Jill Santopolo (@JillSantopolo @PutnamBooks)

The Light We Lost mixes with a touch of Daisy Jones and the Six in this novel of first love, passion, and the power of choice--and how we cannot escape the people we are meant to be.

Two loves. Two choices. One chance to follow her dreams.

Emily has come a long way since she lost her two passions fifteen years ago: music, and Rob. She's a psychologist at NYU who helps troubled college students like the one she once was. Together with her caring doctor husband, Ezra, she has a beautiful life. They're happy. They hope to start a family. But when a tragic event in Emily's present too closely echoes her past, and parts of her story that she'd hoped never to share come to light, her perfect life is suddenly upturned. Then Emily hears a song on the radio about the woman who got away. The melody and voice are hauntingly familiar. Could it be? As Emily's past passions come roaring back into her life, she'll find herself asking: Who is she meant to be? Who is she meant to love?

​Dr. Emily Gold’s life wasn’t always so perfect.  She wasn’t always happily married with a satisfying job as a psychologist at NYU. Her memories are marked by devastating loss - the loss of her mother as a young girl and the loss of her very first love and all that they could have been.  Sometimes she feels like an imposter helping students deal with the same issues that have haunted her for so long.
 
But when fate hands her another blow, an unexpected voice on the radio makes her question everything that her life has become and wonder what it would have been if she had made a different choice.

The artist sang, his baritone strong and full, with a rasp that gave it added warmth. It felt familiar but at the same time, new. With a jolt, Emily thought she recognized the singer, but then she wasn’t sure. So much time had passed. She hadn’t heard his voice in years.

​No one can make me cry quite like Jill Santopolo. In Everything After, she delivers a story that is both poignant and sophisticated.  Her characters are beautifully flawed and her prose is achingly tender.  Set against a vivid backdrop of a Manhattan in fall, it’s a symphony for the heart strings.
 
Maybe it echoed so true for me because the loss of my own mother is still so fresh or maybe it’s because no one really forgets their first true love.  Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because it reminds me of how strong we truly are…

Life was a blend of choices and not choices, things that we had control over and things we didn’t. Her mom had once told her that it’s not what happens to you but how you respond that determines your path in life.