***Attention readers: As of May 2012, this book has a new cover and new title, Any Other Night. Check out the book’s Goodread’s page for all the information.***
Title: Loving Emily
Author: Anne Pfeffer
Publisher: Self Published
Pages: 276 paperback
My Rating: 5/5 stars
Source: I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest and thoughtful review
Ryan Mills is torn with guilt over the death of his best friend, and it’s all because of Emily Wintraub. If Ryan hadn’t seen those incredible gray-blue eyes, hadn’t pegged her as a Potentially Amazing Woman, he would never have gone looking for her at the party that night. He would never have left his wasted friend Michael alone, when Michael needed him and asked him to stay. And if Ryan hadn’t left, Michael would never have driven off, totaled his car, and taken the cosmic rocket ride into death.
As far as Ryan’s concerned, when you’ve done something terrible, you don’t deserve to be happy. He tries not to fall for Emily, but he can’t help it. Before long, he is “completely, gonzo, out-of-control in love.”
Ryan then learns that Michael died with a secret. Still grieving, he feels compelled to take on his friend’s unfinished business. When Emily begins to question where his commitments really lie—with her or with Michael’s memory—Ryan is forced to examine his choices. What does he owe to Michael, to Emily, and to himself?
This book was so amazingly fantastic that I am still working on picking my jaw up off the floor. I have tried time and time again to come up with the perfect words to describe what I am feeling and all I can say that this story is bitter-sweet in the best way possible. It was a beautiful, sad story. It was also a complex, happy story. It definitely made me cry, but it sure as heck made me laugh too. It left me feeling happy and completely in love with Ryan but also a bit sad that some of it all wasn’t just a bad dream. Really, if you ask me, any book that pushes you through so many emotions in such a short amount of time is bound to be a good one. I knew from the very first moment I was entered into Ryan’s world, I would love everything about it. Every character was so well-rounded and complex, that Anne could have easily written the story from any of their perspectives. We learn so much about so many people that you come to love and adore them by the time the story is over. The events flowed with perfect timing and it was just an all-around entertaining, tear-jerker of a story.
Ryan is your average 16-year-old guy with a very non-average life. He has his sights set on Emily, a girl he has been in love with for over a year. Ryan also has a best friend, Michael who is a bit of a mess but is ALWAYS there for Ryan. And then there’s Ryan’s family, an uber famous director for a father, twin sisters that keep him on his toes, a barely there mom, and Rosario, the house keeper that has practically raised them. Their family is unconventional to say the least and Ryan doesn’t necessarily like it like that.
Ryan’s life is complicated and there are things he would love to change about it, but for the most part it’s going good especially when he just may have a chance with Emily. This is when disaster strikes. Ryan loses his best friend and convinces himself it is his entire fault. Things progress with Emily but there is still this guilt lingering over Ryan that holds him back. Then an unexpected person, Chrissie, becomes one of the most important things to him because she just may be carrying Michael’s baby. So of course if you enter another girl into the picture, the new girlfriend would obviously get jealous. Jealous girlfriends, complicated situations, more responsibility than anyone should have to handle, plus a debt that Ryan thinks he must pay off to earn his good Karma back. Yeah, and you thought it sounded like a sticky situation before?
Anne created a character you will love, I mean totally and completely love. I am the older sister to three boys so I am fairly certain I know how they act and I can guess what they are thinking. For someone who has no sons, Anne wrote the male character perfectly. Ryan’s voice was so strong throughout the story. It was like getting inside the head of a real-life teenage boy. He is a genuine guy; he is kind and is always trying to do the right thing no matter how screwed up his life gets in the end. He has so much potential to be something great and wonderful, you just spend the whole book wondering when he will realize it too. The love he has over his sisters, Ro, Michael, Emily, Chrissie, and even the baby just astounded me. He has the best of intentions but things just never seemed to work out for him. My heart truly went out to Ryan because of this. I wanted to take away the guilt over Michael’s death, I wanted things to just work out with Emily, I wanted to be there to comfort him as he felt like a zamboni was driving over his chest. He seemed real to me, he acted just like a 16 year-old boy would and I can’t say I’ve seen one done better than Ryan. Anne truly did such an amazing job with this character.
Okay, now that you see how much I can gush about just one character, just imagine what I can say about every other character! Some of them may not have been my favorite but they seemed real and alive to me so that’s enough reason to at least mention them!
Michael is one character you really get to know which sounds odd because he is the only one who is technically not there. I think I would have loved Michael regardless of his screwed up life. He was confident and easy-going. He loosened Ryan up and let his own confidence rub off on him. I think he made Ryan a stronger person whether he knew it or not. Anne put so much of Michael into this story that I eventually began to miss him even though I never even knew him. I just felt like I did. He was a great person with a troubled life. I can see why Ryan was so crushed by his death not only because Michael was his best friend, but because Michael was a truly great friend to lose.
Emily is another character you learn a lot about. I must say, I didn’t like her as much as I loved the other characters but I am kind of thinking that is the way it is supposed to be. She is sweet, super smart, and really good for Ryan. She helps pick up the broken pieces of him after Michael’s death so naturally I love her for that. But where Ryan is strong, selfless, and responsible, Emily is selfish, jealous, and thinks of her own feelings more than Ryan’s. Ryan tries so hard to be there for everyone so when he spends a little less time with Emily, she throws a fit about it. At first I got really irritated but then I really thought about it. It’s not that she is spoiled and snobby, she is just a normal teenage girl and normal teenage girls want their boyfriend close by all the time; Emily is no different at all! The thought of another girl around, romantic relationship or not, is just too much for her handle sometimes and she really doesn’t feel comfortable with the whole Chrissie situation. So there were moments where I really didn’t like Emily but I could still see why she appealed to Ryan so much. If her character were any different the story just wouldn’t work.
As for Ryan’s family, they were all incredible, maybe a bit screwed up, but still incredible. Every family is dysfunctional and Ryan’s is no different. I hated how distant and cold his parents were at first but the more you got to know about them, the more you can understand and sympathize. Yeah, what they did by ignoring their kids was never right, but just getting their side of the story surely helped my love for them in the end. Ryan’s sisters were so adorable! They looked up to their big brother so much it just made my heart melt. Any younger sibling can sometimes be a nuisance but Ryan always made time for his little sisters. Oh and we can’t forget about Ro, she is so amazing! She takes care of Ryan and his sisters as if they were her own. She is strict with them but I think that is what makes them all such great kids regardless of their flashy lifestyle.
I adored Chrissie throughout the whole book! She is a free spirit, someone who doesn’t let the bad times get her down, and when it comes down to it, she is the exact type of friend that Ryan needs. Chrissie is maybe a little too flippant for my own personal liking but it suits her character. She truly believes that things will turn out okay in the end and in her case they somehow do. I wouldn’t force her situation onto anyone (being pregnant at a young age, with the father of the baby dead) but she handles it with grace and ease, and of course the help of Ryan. She is like a bright ray of sunshine in this whole story. Ryan suffers a lot, and some of it is because of the situation that Chrissie and Michael have gotten him in, but she makes these tough times bearable for him.
I know that this review is all over the place but I am just hoping you guys can trust me on this one. You will LOVE this story. It was so great from start to finish. Every character was so well written whether I loved their personalities or not. And it has a beautiful message behind it! That is like a triple whammy in YA contemporary fiction! You will go through a slew of emotions while reading Loving Emily, it has some hysterical highs and depressing lows, but it makes the book that much better. I really couldn’t have picked a better book to start 2012 off with.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW:
Anne graciously offered to answer some interview questions on the blog today! I love her answers and know you guys all will too! Please feel free to leave a comment down below telling us what you thought!
What made you decide to write this from a boy’s point of view?
I loosely based my protagonist Ryan on the character of Lloyd Dobler, from the 1989 film Say Anything. It’s one of my favorite movies ever and served as the inspiration for Loving Emily.
In each, a quirky, low-achieving guy falls for a beautiful brainy girl who’s going to England, and in each the girl’s father opposes the romance. Like Lloyd, Ryan is a boy who people underestimate, but who turns out to be a gem.
In other respects, my book goes its own way and is very different from Say Anything. My story’s darker and focuses less on the romance and more on Ryan’s growing up and coming of age.
What were some of your biggest challenges writing the character of Ryan?
I’m not sure what made me think that I, a grown woman with no sons, could write a book in the voice of a sixteen-year old boy. I addressed this handicap as best as I could by showing my manuscript to every male who I could persuade to read it. I was lucky to meet guys at writing classes and conferences who kindly steered me away from disaster over and over again.
For example, in the first version of the book, Ryan drove a yellow Mazda Miata that he had named Amelia. (I cringe now to think of it.) A nice guy in a critique group diplomatically suggested Ryan’s current BMW convertible and also that the car remain unnamed.
I also consulted with three different teenage boys, sons of people I knew, running various scenes by them to see which rang true and seemed authentic. They didn’t hesitate to say what they thought worked and what didn’t. Their ideas and preferences are all over the book.
Were there any real-life situations that you used to build this story?
My daughter attended private school in Los Angeles and so I was very familiar with that world. It’s one that is written about a lot, often in broad stereotypes: the big shot film director, the Hollywood wife, the spoiled, bored kids, and so forth. I tried to steer clear of that and create, if I could, a family of three-dimensional individuals (although Ryan’s mother does wear those Hollywood wife shoes – some things cannot be avoided!).
There’s one scene in the book that actually happened at my daughter’s school. I don’t want to say to say too much and create a spoiler, but it’s the flashback scene where Michael and Ryan are five years old. Two of my daughter’s classmates in kindergarten actually did what happens in the book, and we still laugh about it sometimes.
What has been the most rewarding part of writing this book?
I always dreamed of writing a book, but I didn’t think I had one in me. To have somehow done it now, after thinking for years that I couldn’t, is very gratifying. I’m glad that I went slowly and took the advice I got to keep reworking and improving it, even when I thought it was totally done. That made Loving Emily a much better book.
Also, it’s a real thrill when someone tells me they love my book. It’s the best feeling in the world!
Have there been teachers, mentors, friends, etc. that have been influential in your writing?
Absolutely—in fact, I couldn’t function as a writer without them. My big stroke of luck two years ago was finding a writing class in Los Angeles in which I meet weekly with my group and teacher. Each of us reads ten pages from whatever we’re working on and gets critiqued.
The teacher is Linzi Glass, and she’s been amazingly helpful in helping me add drama and tension to my work and develop my scenes and characters to make them richer and more layered.
I also work with a free-lance editor, Meredith Efken, who helps me a lot with structure. And my writing buddy Cortney reads everything I write and always has great comments.
That’s my support group, and I really mean it when I say I couldn’t write my books without these people!
Who was the easiest character in Loving Emily for you to write? Who was the hardest?
Over time the easiest became Ryan, because I knew him so well and had his voice so ingrained in me that the writing felt very natural. He will likely always be my favorite character.
The hardest one was Emily, because her character had the most thankless job in the book—to be Ryan’s love interest, yet also the person who hurt him the most. I tried really hard to make her motives understandable, so she’d be sympathetic to readers. I hope it worked!
Care to share some of your weird writing quirks with us?
I don’t know if this is a weird writing quirk, but I do re-read and re-rewrite obsessively and, unlike people who keep their work private, I show mine to anyone who can stand to look at it. It somehow helps me to get a lot of feedback, which I sift through. I don’t get overwhelmed by a lot of conflicting advice; rather, I organize it in my head and somehow come out with my own decision about what to do.
We are all dying to know, who is your fictional crush?
As boring as this sounds, I’d have to say my own character Ryan. I love all my male characters—they are the most obliging men in my life and always do and say exactly what I want them to!
Anne, thanks again SO MUCH for 1) allowing me to read and review your book and 2) doing this AMAZING interview with me. I am truly honored!
