I really like how the book is set up from the get-go. Julia and Gabe’s relationship is hopelessly complicated - it doesn’t fit cleanly into any box. He wasn’t her boyfriend, but they’d dated once in the past, then been long-term friends, and finally slept together again, after which Gabe ignored her for a few weeks. “Complicated” is genuinely the only word for it. And then Gabe dies. Abruptly, in an unforeseen accident - he slips in the shower, hits his head, and bleeds out.

To thicken the plot, another mysterious woman approaches Julia at the wake, this one a little more hostile. Julia later learns she was Gabe’s girlfriend, Elizabeth.

The journey Julia undertakes - mostly to get back the medical band she made for Gabe - keeps surfacing versions of Gabe that belonged to other people. I love how the book presents the full spectrum of emotions after a loss. It’s not all grief. There’s frustration, tenderness toward others feeling the same thing, compassion, and a sense of humour about the sheer absurdity of life. Julia’s evolving relationship with Elizabeth captures this perfectly. She initially decides Elizabeth is going to be a cold-hearted person who has no right to be keeping Gabe’s guitar. It’s only after talking to her and spending time with her that Julia realises Elizabeth is grieving in her own way too. There’s tension, awkwardness, and these fleeting sparks of understanding.

The flashbacks to Julia and Gabe’s relationship keep deepening our picture of it, and then comes the gut-punch reveal: the reason Gabe started ignoring Julia is that he’d found out Elizabeth was pregnant, and he just didn’t know how to deal with it. It’s such a life-hitting-you-hard moment. Julia and Gabe had finally confessed their feelings for each other - this could’ve been the start of something beautiful - and it gets derailed by the pregnancy.

I also appreciate that the book doesn’t memorialise the dead character as perfect. Gabe had real faults. He wasn’t a great boyfriend to Elizabeth - he was childish and needy - and he didn’t treat Julia particularly well either. It’s a well-composed book that keeps reminding you how messy love, memory, and relationships really are. It teaches you lessons we all already know - don’t judge a book by its cover - but in the moment, when you’re inside the characters’ heads, you don’t feel they’re being unreasonable. It’s only later you realise they misjudged each other. And then you can’t help but think: how many times have I done exactly this in my own life? How many of those misjudgements did I never get the chance to correct, simply because I never got to know the other person well enough?

Just thinking about that medical bracelet, and everything it represents, is heartbreaking on its own. This is one of the only books I’ve read where the author nails both the thrill of young love and the complicated weight of adult relationships at the same time. It made me feel so much more than I ever expected going in.