The Love of My Life

by Louise Douglas

The Love of My Life by Louise Douglas is a beautiful novel that portrays both the innocence of childhood, and the dynamics of love and loss with deftness and sensitivity. It is, above all, a stunning debut from an author with a unique and natural narrative voice.

‘I miss him with every breath and heartbeat. He should have been my happy ending. Instead, he is the sad beginning to my story.’

Olivia and Luca Felicone had known each other nearly all their lives, but when they fell in love as teenagers and eloped to London, they broke the hearts of those closest to them. Luca’s parents run Marinella’s restaurant, the colourful hub of life in the otherwise bleak north-eastern seaside town of Watersford, and his mother, Angela, has never forgiven Olivia for causing such a rift in her beloved family.

On a freezing January night Olivia’s life is shattered when she learns that Luca has been killed in a car accident on the M1. She is left with nothing, and after suffering from weeks of overwhelming grief, she abandons her job and returns North to where Luca has been buried in Watersford, just to be close to him – even though she knows she will not be welcome at Marinella’s.

Olivia’s chance meeting with Luca’s married twin brother, Marc, leads to the realization that he is experiencing a loss almost as painful as her own. Their desolation draws them into an affair which both know has no future, but fills the space where Luca should be. It is a course of action that can only spiral out of control, and when it does, the consequences are both explosive and cruel.

• ISBN10: 0330453580
• ISBN13: 9780330453585
• Publish Date: 16 January 2009 (first published 1 February 2008)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 16 February 2022
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Pan Books
• Edition: Unabridged edition
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

I've been wanting to read one of Louise Douglas' books for quite a while now. I got a copy of Missing You back when it first came out, but it's not appealed to me as of yet. I then picked up The Love of my Life at a charity shop a little while ago and because I was looking for a fairly shortish read, I plumped for it one day. I've heard many great things about the book, but it has to be said, I wasn't entirely enamored with the book.

The central premise of the book is the affair that occurs between Olivia and Marc after the death of Olivia's husband, Luca. Obviously their affair is meant to come across as both of them holding on to a part of Luca, but personally I wasn't convinced. It seemed a rather convoluted explanation, so perhaps I missed the point there. I mean, you've just buried your husband and you jump into an affair with his brother. His twin brother, no less. I find that a bit icky. What makes it worse is that neither Marc nor Olivia are repentant about what they're doing. It's as if their affair is the done thing to be doing, that it's actually OK for them to do that, when it wasn't at all. There was no real guilt shown from them, or anything even resembling it.

Another major part of the novel is the lack of relationship Olivia has with the rest of the Felicones due to the fact they felt Olivia had stolen Luca from them. There was a lot of potential there to develop that story even more, but it was just a passing cause, as far as I could tell. It was like, yes, the Felicones do not like Olivia, but that's it, no real reasoning or anything. It should have been explored a lot lot more because that would have been a really interesting avenue for the book to go down. I mean all the essential ingredients were there for a gripping family saga but the lack of anything substantial really let that down for me.

Due to the lack of guilt or remorse shown by Olivia over her affair with Marc I didn't particularly like her. There were no real redemptive features that I could see. As the narrator I had to like her to get into the story but I couldn't, not really. I had sympathy for her regarding the Felicones but in the end, she deserved their hatred, their scorn. The Felicones make up the rest of the cast of characters in the story and despite their reluctance to accept Olivia, I did like them. They were wrong to abuse her so but they were a real family unit, who protect their own at all costs and I suppose I could understand why they were the way they were to Olivia, it was wrong but understandable.

When I started The Love of my Life I was expecting the gripping and intense read that I've read about in the reviews but it all fell a little flat for me. There's no doubt Douglas has talent, but it was wasted on what could have been an amazing story. I got to 100 pages in and then just skim-read the rest of the book and I didn't miss much, not really. Because nothing happens. The Prologue promises some big blow-out between Olivia and the Felicones but that was just a damp squib. The best part of the novel for me were the flashbacks to Olivia's childhood, they were interesting to me. The book I read previous to this blew me away, so the follow up book was always going to be hard to compete, but The Love of My Life was just disappointing. Plain and simple. The plot had a lot of potential, it just wasn't followed through for me. The book was definitely, for me, trying too hard to be deep and meaningful but I just wasn't convinced sadly.This review was originally posted on Girls Love To Read