Review: Together by Julie Cohen

This is not a great love story. 
This is a story about great love.

On a morning that seems just like any other, Robbie wakes in his bed, his wife Emily asleep beside him, as always. He rises and dresses, makes his coffee, feeds his dogs, just as he usually does. But then he leaves Emily a letter and does something that will break her heart. As the years go back all the way to 1962, Robbie's actions become clearer as we discover the story of a couple with a terrible secret - one they will do absolutely anything to protect.

Review: Wow! I can tell that this is one of those books that is going to stay with me for a long time. This book is about Emily and Robbie and their story and its really hard to say anything else about the synopsis without giving any spoilers. Don't you just love books where you have to talk to someone else who has read the book in order to actually speak about it properly-so please let me know if you have read this book, I need to talk about it!

First of all the thing that I loved most about this book was the structure. This book is written backwards, yes backwards! Hats off to Julie Cohen for managing to write a book backwards and yet still filling it with so many details to keep even the most avid reader happy. This book begins in Maine in 2016 and then ends up all the way back in England in 1962 and follows Emily and Robbie over various points of time in between. 

Then we have the love. This novel is, as it says, about great love. We see Emily and Robbie's lives together and apart and how their love affects them when they are with each other and when they are not with each other. We also explore the love that they have in their own families and with their children and the lengths that they would both go to to protect their familial love. I love that these two characters are so passionate and such romantics and also so into the love for their children, it blew me away!

Emily and Robbie were really easy to like as characters even if they haven't always been open and honest with the rest of the world, they have always been open and honest with each other and once I saw that I could trust them as characters, I was ready to go on this journey with them! As I said, I loved that they were both such romantics, but Emily was much more practical than Robbie and their relationship needed that. Robbie is physically practical, a boat builder, but she kept their decisions practical and thought of the consequences of their actions and not just the here and now. They both have their faults but they have owned them and moved on from them and that's what makes them so real that they just jump off the page!

The beginning of this book is set in Maine and then moves from Miami to Cambridge to Norfolk. I loved that I could identify these settings and particularly loved that Maine was featured, having visited there recently. I could picture it all so well and the sea scenes in particular were described incredibly well by this author. 

I would definitely advise you to pick this book up. It is romantic but also real; it is covers serious issues but these characters are so much fun; it is full of detail but in no way confusing; it will sweep you away! If you are a fan of Julie Cohen then you will know the heart and soul that goes into her novels, and if you are new to this author then this will be a great place to start.

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