This is going to be one of my favorite books of 2025! The story follows friends Ari and Mae over two decades of love, friendship, and heartbreak. A sweeping, deeply emotional, and in the end, hopeful story.

Ari and Mae meet as college students in Leeds - Mae is local and Ari has just transferred from NYU - and quickly become close. Each has baggage from their past and their families that they are reckoning with. In the early years of their friendship, they promise each other that they will one day become parents and share a child together. We see how their adult lives unfold with this promise in the background, inching toward the foreground as they get older and into deeper romantic relationships.

This story centers around what it means to create a family, and growing to embrace all the parts of those we love.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed the different and realistic exploration of how lgbt people make their own families and how beautiful but heartbreaking the entire process can be. I absolutely hated the ending.

THIS BOOK OMG I LOVE IT, like the relationship between Mae and Ari is beautiful and watching it span over the years was so beautiful to see. The moments of their college years is what I enjoyed the most as someone who's still in college and unravelling the mysteries of Ari's past had me hooked and the queer cast was also a plus for me. I need more from this author!

4.5 stars, but I round up.

Midway through this book, i knew that I would need to stop what I was doing and just finish it. It was... such an ode to queerness and friendship. A queer friend of mine once said, "Queer friendships are mushy." And that is how i felt about Ari and Mae. They were so platonically in love with one another. And that deep, intense love propels the story through 10 years of ups and downs. I loved it.

This book has toxic relationships and much tragedy, and t I thought it was well done because of the found family and queer love. It does unveil over a ten-year time but while reading this I felt like the pacing was a bit off. I just felt myself losing interest because of this. It was still a nice switch up from my usual genres and give it a try if you like drama and interesting relationships.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Perennial for the e arc in exchange for my honest review.
3 star

This Love was an excellent read. I loved the writing and it was propulsive. Great character study. I would read more from this author.

As much as I love to easily DNF books, I’m so glad I was signed up for a tour date for this book, because I pushed through when I normally wouldn’t have and ended up loving it. The beginning of the book, when Ari and Mar are in college, is a bit of a slow, with Mar seeming to be determined to be pissed off about everything. But as we move to their adult lives, the story and their relationship feels deeper, and the mess and heartache feels more earned. And oh what mess there is. I loved the exploration of longing for a family from their queer POVs, and how paths never quite lead where you think they will. It’s absolutely bursting with emotion, and I think it’s gonna be a hit.

First DNF of the year. This has the exact essence of Normal People and I hated that book. This whole style of two characters who seem to have so many troubles yet lack substance, unhealthily dependent on each other with a bunch of trauma and difficult tropes to read is not my cup of tea. Also, the adult/minor relationship in this book wasn’t obviously disclosed to me and was gross to read.

Book Review This Love by Lotte Jeffs
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

This is a fabulous story of Ari (gender nonconforming pansexual queer) and Mae (butch lesbian) who meet in college and form a platonic soul mate connection. They meet when Ari is fleeing NYC and Mae is a distrusting, alienated and lonely although superficially popular student.

They are both flawed, messy, with lots of baggage. That is the heart of this book. The character development is masterful and reminds me of Rooney. Watching them struggle through their baggage in an emotionally vulnerable and realistic manner. Their journey is not straightforward. Ari continues to self sabotage and get into destructive relationships mimicking his relationship with his father. Mae continues to be selfish and rigid. But as they mature, they grow, they change. They challenge each other, they support each other and they plan to support each other in achieving what they both want, having a family, a baby together. You will be rooting for them the entire way on this journey.

Although they are the central characters they are surrounded by family members and partners that are also well developed and add depth to the storylines.

The relationships in this book are the heart and soul. There is love, anger, conflict, support, grief, loss, betrayal and unconditional love. The emotional journeys are evocative and compelling. You will love them and be irritated by them just like any other family member. This felt like a slow building of a found family with a large supportive extended family. This book defies categorization of couples, family and parenting and demonstrates what is possible with love and fluidity.

My only critique is that I would have loved this story to be continued. I wanted more depth and time spent with the characters once they established their families!

If you loved Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow or Normal People you will love this book.

A beautiful and moving story of platonic soulmates, queer love, and found family. Ari and Mae meet in college and form a fast friendship that spans multiple decades. As their friendship develops, they promise to have a child together one day as they both want to be parents but neither can do it on their own. This Love follows them throughout their 20s and 30s as they navigate their friendship, other relationships, loss, love, and everything in between. A sweeping and emotional tale, This Love is a love letter to queer love of every kind.

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

First and foremost this book was just published this past Tuesday! I was hoping to post a review prior to its publication, but January has been a busy month and I’m just a little behind.

This Love is very heavy on the theme of found family. With that, it’s a book full of emotions as a diverse group of characters come together to form their own unique family dynamic. Throughout the story you encounter grief, rage, guilt, joy, and basically any other emotion you can imagine. It leads for a well balanced story with heavy portions and light hearted fun bits.

Despite the emotional range of this book, I did feel that some of the characters felt a little one dimensional especially in the first third of the story. I enjoyed the back portion of the book more simply because of the increased character development and growth that I saw. The timeline of the story was also set up in a manner that was a little weird, but that might have just been personal preference!

💭 Did anyone else read this as an ARC? Did you enjoy it?

#bookrecommendations #arcreader #netgalley #thislove #bookreview

This Love
Lotte Jeffs

She learns to love herself by loving him. She affirms herself by affirming him. When he can't see the beauty in what's broken she shows him the light.

She might take people for granted. She might take effort in stride. She takes him for what he is not just what he shows people. She asks for more than he offers and he blooms in the giving. She's loved him from day one and we're not talking about a romantic kind of love. Theirs was a friendship, beautiful and life giving, life affirming. A once in a lifetime kind of love.

Love doesn't come easy for him but he loves her effortlessly. Whole and fully. In a way that makes her feel at once lovable. He shows her that she is worth it, whatever it is.

I really loved this book.

I loved their love. I adored their friendship. It wasn't a will they won't they. And it was a yes from me.

THIS LOVE showcases the kind of friend that loves you when you cannot. The kind of friend that reflects back to you what you cannot see in yourself. The kind of friend that has seen the various shades of your spectrum and loves every version of you that you have dared to become.

Through hard conversations and easy times. Through rough waters and gentle seas, their friendship was the anchor that allowed them to explore the vastness of who they were.

Thanks to Netgalley, Harper Perennial and Paperbacks | Harper Perennial for the advanced copy!

Out Now!

THIS LOVE...⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I was drawn in by the premise and hearing this was already a bestseller in the UK. Unfortunately the writing style and execution wasn’t a good fit for me and I decided to DNF. Thank you to Harper Perennial for the opportunity to read and review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Perennial and Paperbacks for the ARC!

I loved the idea of this book, but it fell flat for me. The writing didn’t impress me, and I felt like the emotional depth missed the mark. I enjoyed the queer representation, but it felt forced and over the top at times. It was also incredibly long. Very millennial coded—not a bad thing but it was too much.

The future vignettes didn’t add to the story—they were confusing and didn’t hit like they could have?

I think there was so much potential for this story but I struggled to like this because it felt so unrealistic and not in a fiction way.

The reason I give this 2 stars is I like how this book challenges the heteronormative family and does a good job of speaking to sexuality fluidity. I also liked Ari’s backstory and felt most connected to him.

This was a multifaceted queer story that challenges the status quo, this is it. It’s painful and raw, yet beautiful and healing. I wouldn’t say that books about found family are rare, but ones like this are, and I think that makes it really special. There is a lot that happens, and at times, I wondered if it was all necessary to pack the same punch, but it didn’t bother me enough to question it too much.While the story itself was captivating, the writing style was not always my favorite. While there are two MCs, Mae and Ari, we are introduced to a lot of supporting characters who often weave in and out and random times, which at times made it hard to really connect the relationships in meaningful ways. I also found the jumping timelines to be a bit confusing and would’ve preferred if everything was told in a linear way as I think it would’ve packed way more of an emotional punch.Although I had a tough time getting into it at first, I’m so happy I stuck with it as this isn’t the kind of book I would want to read in one sitting. I thought about it a lot when I wasn’t reading and it’s one that will stay with me long after.

This book was a bit too fast paced and just not as up my alley as I hoped it would be. The characters didn't feel fleshed out enough

This Love by Lotte Jeffs was such a wonderful book!
I honestly wasn’t expecting to enjoy this as much as I did.
A remarkable story of queer love, friendship and family.

I want to thank Netgalley and HarperCollins for giving me the chance to read This Love by Lotte Jeffs. The book was fantastic. It is definitely not one of my normal happy go lucky reads. This one was heartfelt and heavy. The story was beautiful, and it made me want to keep reading to find out how it ends up. The story focuses on Mae and Ari. Mae is a lesbian who doesn't stay in relationships for more than a few weeks, and Ari is a Pansexal who is trying to escape his past trauma. The love Ari and Mae have for each other is beautiful, but they also have to figure out where each other stand in the others' lives as they grow up and evolve. The story is great. The characters are given life, to the point that I was rooting or hating them. I gave this book 5 stars. It is a definite must-read.

A bestseller in the UK, this was a beautiful debut about queer love, friendship and found family that spans over a decade. It tackles difficult topics from addiction, loss, infertility, adoption and beyond and was well done on audio. Slow moving at times, this was worth sticking with it to the end. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

CW: miscarriage

A love like Mae and Ari's is the type of ultimate, soulmate love that not everyone is lucky enough to experience in their lifetimes.

Our main characters, Mae and Ari, meet as two queer students and we watch their friendship evolve over several years: with several partners, periods of grief, building of careers, etc. This is such a beautiful, engaging, and well-written exploration of platonic love, familial love, romantic love, grief, healing from trauma, and queerness. We see some AMAZING examples of the queering of gender, of relationships, of family structures, etc.

It was a bit slow-moving at first, and their argument 1/4-through the story was very frustrating. It is so very real, though. And from that, we see so much growth. The character's in this story don't handle everything perfectly, but such is life. And as the reader, you still can't help but love them. The characters in this book are portrayed with such nuance and realism that they feel like living, breathing individuals. And this isn't just with Mae and Ari but with their families as well.

The only critique I have is the 2030 chapters. While they create a sense of intrigue and mystery, their tone feels unnecessarily bleak and a little misleading. They don’t seem to add meaningful insights into the characters’ journeys and the purpose of these snapshots remains unclear.

Overall, Jeffs demonstrates a rare gift for storytelling, emotional intelligence, understanding the human condition, and showing us a realistic world where queer joy is possible.