Wish You Were Here - Renee Carlino

Charlotte has spent her twenties adrift, floating from interest to interest, job to job, and guy to guy, searching for a spark but never quite finding it. All she knows is that she won’t discover it working as a waitress at a pies-and-fries joint in Los Angeles or living with her fun but aimless best friend in a tiny apartment in the Arts District.

Then Charlotte collides with Adam, a gorgeous and soulful painter who seems just as lost as she feels. Their instant connection turns into a midnight drink… and a whirlwind night of champagne, Chinese food, and the kind of conversation that only happens in romantic comedies. But the next morning, Adam gives Charlotte the cold shoulder, leaving her confused and hurt—and wondering if the few odd moments between them the night before were red flags in disguise.

Months later, Charlotte hasn’t been able to shake Adam, so she decides to find out what happened the morning after their magical night together. This fateful decision rewrites their wild love story, but what Charlotte doesn’t know yet is that the ending has already been written.

Description taken from Goodreads. 

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There are some authors out there who you just discover, completely randomly and accidentally, and you end up absolutely loving them. For me, Renee Carlino is one of these authors.

I stumbled across her books a couple of years ago, and picked up Swear On This Life quite by accident. And wow. It really blew me away. I read Before We Were Strangers not long after, and that was another five star read for me.

I picked up Wish You Were Here with very high expectations, but it still managed to surpass them. There is just a really pure emotional style to Carlino's writing that makes for the most engaging stories. There were so many points in this story where I was unsure how it was going to play out, but it was absolutely wonderful. I loved the characters, especially our heroine, Charlotte, who goes on an incredibly touching journey from beginning to end. 

This is a story about love, and the many ways it can touch our lives. Utterly beautiful.

Rating: ✫✫✫✫✫

The Story

"When a person is ready to fall in love, it happens fast..."

When I started reading, I wasn't really sure what to expect at all. The description alludes to the shape the story is going to take, but it is by no means explicit. However, I think I sussed fairly quickly where the story was going.

I don't want to give any spoilers away, but this is a very emotional read, and that's what makes the story so beautiful. The plot isn't perfect by any means, but what made it a five star read for me was the way I really connected with it on a deep level. It touched my heart. Ultimately, this is a story about love; the beauty of it, but also about the messy, random, sudden feeling that captures our hearts, and that can often make our actions irrational. And I think what Carlino does beautifully is write stories that display love as it really is. None of her stories are fairytales, but they show us how love really impacts upon our lives in a powerful way. 

I think this is helped in this story by our heroine, Charlotte. I really liked that Charlotte is a little older than we tend to see in love stories. At 27, she's exactly the same age as I was when reading it, and this helped me to connect with her. But even more endearing is the way we see Charlotte really grow over the course of the story. She starts the novel as a confused and naive young woman who doesn't have any sort of direction in life. But because of everything she goes through, she ends the story in an entirely different place. Despite all of the hardships, the book feels surprisingly uplifting, refreshing, and strangely positive! I loved being able to witness what this story did to Charlotte, and feel it all in my own heart. 

It's just such a well written story. Despite taking place over quite a long stretch of time, the book never feels disjointed, and I always found the narrative very fluid. On top of that, it was just so incredibly easy to connect to all of the characters, both predominant and secondary. And most importantly, it's a beautiful story that displays love in a really poignant way.

The Verdict

"Today everyone is looking for the perfect future and the perfect partner who has it all together so they can feel like the life they dream of is possible, but when you're dying, all you want is a person to love right now."

I had amazingly high hopes for this book, because my previous experiences with Carlino's books had been wonderful. I really didn't see how it could live up to my expectations, but it did.

I think the real beauty in Carlino's stories, and something that was particularly noticeable in Wish You Were Here, is how real the stories are. They are messy and imperfect, but that's exactly what love really is. It's never a fairytale, and so we don't get one. It was very raw and emotional, and the story really touched my heart. 

If you like love stories with depth and substance, with bittersweet moments and truths that aren't always perfectly happy, you should read this book. I challenge you not to see beauty in it.