Review: True Love Story By Willow Aster

Title: True Love Story
Author: Willow Aster
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Goodreads rating: 4.23 out of 5.00 (5, 300+ ratings)
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Sparrow Fisher is transforming. No longer dressed up in antiquated clothes and ideals, she is finally trying on her freedom.

Before she moves to New York City, she meets Ian Sterling, a musician Sparrow has dreamed about since she first saw him. The attraction is instant, but their relationship isn't so simple.

Over a five year span, Sparrow and Ian run into each other in unusual places. Each time, Sparrow has to decide if she can trust him, if he feels the same for her, and finally, if love is really enough.




Review by Chantelle



True Love Story has left me a little confounded... I could easily give this book a fantastic five stars, and I could just as easily give it a dismal one star... but there seems to be no in-between - as if I'd be doing it an injustice by giving it any other rating. That basically sums up my reaction to this book; there were many 'SO MUCH FEELS' highs, and so many 'beyond irritating' lows. 

Let's start with the highs. In the first chapter, we meet Sparrow Fisher...

      It has been a year, two months, and seventeen days since I last saw him. Two years, ten months, and five days since he broke my heart—well, since I knew that he had broken my heart. Technically, he began breaking my heart the moment I met him, five years, eleven months, and one day ago. I’ve traveled across the country to get away from him, changed my phone number so he couldn’t keep calling, had one botched relationship after another, all in an effort to forget. 

      And now I’m 1,600 miles from home, waiting on another flight to head 500 miles further south, and he’s walking toward me in DFW airport.

TLS starts off with so much festering angst and heartbreak that I was already squirming in my chair fighting off hand tingles from the very first page! That is not common, but it's a great thing. The narrative style instantly reminded me of Tarryn Fisher. (Also, just an aside, but Sparrow Fisher, Tarryn Fisher, both have long curly hair, both are writers, Tarryn was helping promote TLS... let's just say that Tarryn was basically how I imagined Sparrow.) It was one of the best first chapters I've read this year, I was already addicted to Willow Aster's debut. 

Like Tarryn Fisher, Aster starts at the present day, and then flashes back to the past to explain the tumultuous relationship between Sparrow and Ian Sterling; about how it started, and as foreshadowed on that first page, how it ended. However, unlike Fisher, Aster doesn't constantly flash back and forth but instead, details the past until present day which surprisingly, was an aspect that I did not enjoy as much as I thought I would. Maybe comparing the two authors so much was where I went wrong, but I couldn't help it. Fisher skims over the 3 years that Caleb and Olivia were dating in about a chapter, but Aster devotes the majority of her book to the utopia of Sparrow and Ian.

So for me, this is where the book started going downhill, then plateauing and staying there. I love romance as much as the next girl, however the romance isn't very loveable when it's just about how utterly perfect the main character, Sparrow, is. Every single guy that she meets genuinely wants to marry her (I'm not even joking), her best assets in her own opinion are her boobs, she has legs for days,  a killer smile, hair blah blah. Every scenario revolved around how attractive she was to everyone. It was really something that I wanted to fast forward. I guess what Aster meant when she said that she wrote about "flawed" characters, was that she wrote about flawed male characters who could fight over this amazingly rare unicorn fairy of a girl. Unless being pretty is a flaw, I call bullshit. 

However, redemption came in two forms. One was that it had one of the sexiest, i'm-actually-blushing scenes I've ever read. My only clue for you is to watch out for these words: 
        "dang girl, dang girl, dang girl, dang..."

Coupled with the song below, I was a swooning mess. 

Secondly, how the relationship ended was so damn intense. It brought all the angst and hand tingling feels back into the mix, and I was invested again. I understood her flaw now. As they say, endings are often the most important since they make the most lasting impression, and since I loved the last twenty percent of the novel, I couldn't not give this novel a good rating. However, I understand where people are coming from when they say they didn't enjoy it as much. 

Overall, I wouldn't call it amazing, but it's definitely a promising debut.

Ratings
Overall: 7.5/10
Plot: 4/5
Writing: 4/5
Characters: 2/5
Cover: 0/5