A Heartbreaking Twist | The Edge of Always by Rebecca Ryan

A first love they never forgot. A second chance to change everything . . .

For best friends Luna and Emmett, each summer was an endless adventure. Reuniting each year, they shared their greatest hopes, dreams and stolen glances under the warm sun. They were two teenagers on the verge of something more, but as they stood at the brink of their future, a devastating secret tore them apart.

For two decades, Luna is heartbroken in more ways than one, until she discovers a portrait of herself in Paris. In a twist of fate, sitting beside her is Emmett, the only boy she ever dreamt of being with. He’s desperate to explain, hoping that the painting holds the answers to twenty years of unspoken questions.

Will one week in Paris be enough to heal the wounds between them, and will they finally get their always?

This is the fourth book by Rebecca Ryan that I have read, and as with the previous books that I enjoyed, The Edge of Always had me in tears.

There is so much depth to her characters, so much history they share, and I sat down to process it for a while after I finished it.

Luna and Emmett have shared a bond for years, but as they grew into adulthood, a secret tore them apart. They wanted different things out of their lives. When Emmett decides he wants to leave the caravan park that was always his home and Luna determines that she wants the simple life that same village always offered (while her family is falling apart behind the scenes), they head in different directions.

Fast forward a few years; their lives are incredibly different. Emmett is a doctor travelling across the world, and Luna is living an isolated life in the village where they met, writing a rather morbid but fascinating blog that has gained something of a cult following (it’s about art and death!). 

However, things are about to change…for a painting of Luna has been released into the world, the final work by a beloved friend, someone with an interesting history of his own who shared his love of art and people with the friends he made at the caravan park. 

Luna, in a daring moment, pushed by her far more daring sister, heads to Paris, where she is forced to confront not only the painting she had no idea existed, but also Emmett and memories of a romance that was never given a chance to grow.

And here’s where I started to sob a little. I had my suspicions about the characters, the secrets they were keeping (though I was VERY wrong where one was concerned) and what was going to happen; however, I really could not have guessed all of this. And for that I am grateful - a predictable twist this is not.

One big thing that I loved (and I am going to stress to readers who want something new): the third-act twist is not that one is married, or there’s a surprise pregnancy…it’s HEARTBREAKING, but also so beautiful. So, thank you, Rebecca Ryan, for making me sob my way through my evening meal as I read this book…and continued to cry pathetically while I readied for bed.

The characters were incredible; you made me care about all of them - though Luna’s mother was the sort of person I would not want to be stuck in a room (or anywhere else) with. The way that you built a world around Luna and Emmett and made them so relatable, even when the experiences they were going through were so foreign.

The Edge of Always is definitely a book to pick up and cry over…I know people love books that make them cry.