Book Review: Love Comes

Title: Love Comes

Author: Drew Beyson

Date: 2023

Quote: "Sarah felt certain that she was meant to be with him."

But love doesn't come to Sarah and Dan. In this "prequel" story, Dan is the ex-boyfriend Sarah dumps before moving to the small town of Moon View and finding a better man. 

Beyson's intention is to show her characters "becoming better versions of themselves," but her hasty writing style doesn't promise very effective descriptions of this. The copy of Love Comes I have was not even edited for verb tense, so a character "is" doing something in one sentence and "was" doing it in the next sentence, in the same scene. It's not one of those novels where a character is probing into the past, so that it makes sense to write things like "While she waits for Jack to come home, Jill curls up with a book on the couch. An old postcard falls out from between the pages: a beachfront hotel in Bermuda. January 1954. 'Jane, wish you were here...Jo & Jim.' Jo married Jim in 1950. They were doing well..." It's just careless writing; when Beyson writes that "when she looked at Judith, there was nothing but genuine concern for Sarah in her eyes. It is one of the reasons they were still besties," she's not even made a decision on the question of whether she's trying to create a trendy effect of "immediacy" with "when Sarah looks at Judith, she sees genuine concern for Sarah in Judith's eyes. It is one of the reasons they are still besties," or a traditional effect of a complete story being told after the fact with "when Sarah looked at Judith, she saw genuine concern for Sarah in Judith's eyes. It was one of the reasons they were still besties." 

Anyway, in college neither Sarah nor Judith is a particularly attractive "version of herself." They're roommates. Sarah drinks wine, Judith drinks beer. They have "boyfriends." Dan is Sarah's. Whether they're having safe sex only, like real people who are worth educating in college, or relying on pills and gadgets to prevent the act of baby-making from making a baby, we're not told. In this story we learn that, although Sarah wanted to believe that what she and Dan had was love, at the time, she's not able to believe that for long.

In Love Comes we're not told exactly whether Sarah is a sensible, wholesome girlfriend, or Dan is a responsible, worthwhile boyfriend--friends whose common interests include enjoying their hormones and finding out how long a physical attraction lasts, without doing what makes babies so that any "relationship counselling" they need can come from elders rather than lawyers. Most young people find the opposite sex interesting. If they can keep the interest in one another as human beings, without trying to rush into the big commitment that ruins the lives of those who go too far too fast, they can enjoy each other's company without setting up a lifetime of regrets.

We do see some danger signals. Sarah blurts out that she thinks she's "in love" when Dan has not said anything about his being "in love." For some men who are not "in love," women who think they're "in love" first are fear triggers the men want to avoid. For others, they're cows that can be milked without having to be fed or sheltered. Dan is in the second category. Sarah is setting herself up for some very unpleasant emotions whenever she has to realize how selfish Dan and his relationship with her have been, all along...but she did ask for that selfish relationship. A girl who wants an unselfish lover who will follow her when she thinks moving to Moon View is a great career move should not tell the nearest cute guy that she's "in love" before she's seen that he's capable of unselfish love. Few young men are.

So, Love Comes is a story that does not fulfill the promise its title makes, in which a shallow, callow chick selfishly grabs for what she wants to call "love" with a shallow, callow fellow who probably privately calls it "benefits." Oh, such a sad, common, really rather tedious little story. Buy it if you want to find out how much more mature and realistic Sarah can grow up to be in the next volume.