I Loved You First

I Loved You First
Reena Jacobs
142 pages
Publisher: the author
Source: the author
★★★☆☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Alexandria and Seth have been friends since they were kids and now they're off to their first year of college together.  It should be a happy time for both of them but there's a problem - Seth is gay and trying to stay in the closest, and Alex is hopelessly in love with him.  I Loved You First is the story of how Alex deals with that.

I don't understand unrequited love at all, probably because I never experienced it.  If I liked a guy growing up and he didn't like me back, I got over it and moved on pretty quick.  What I especially don't understand is Alex's unrequited love for Seth.  She thought that he was awesome, but why couldn't friendship be enough for her?  It's not like he was going to have a serious relationship with another woman.  That bothered me about this novella, but I admit that maybe I just don't understand because I haven't been there.

What was even more annoying was Seth himself.  I can't tell you why without going into some spoilers about the ending, but he was whiny in general.

I will give the author this - I Loved You First was an extremely well written self-published novella.  The characters were all developed equally, the plot flowed evenly, and there were no spelling or grammar errors.  It wasn't a fast paced page-turner, but I kept clicking those pages to find out what would happen next, would Alex ever get over it?

The author's representation of college has been called stereotypical, but I thought it was pretty accurate (aside from the dormrooms.)  Trying to find new friends at college can be hard; there is always that desire to get off campus; and college frat parties are obnoxious sometimes, especially when the brothers are so dense.  It happens!

The afterword by the author caught me off guard.  I thought she had done a great job in the novella showing that people need to have tolerance and understanding and her afterword came off as superfluous and, unfortunately, preachy.  If you read the book, skip the afterword.

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I Loved You First.
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