The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry // A Book With An Identity Crisis

The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry
Genres: Contemporary (YA), Paranormal (YA), Romance (YA)
Pages: 396
Goodreads

Natalie Cleary must risk her future and leap blindly into a vast unknown for the chance to build a new world with the boy she loves.
Natalie’s last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start... until she starts seeing the “wrong things.” They’re just momentary glimpses at first—her front door is red instead of its usual green, there’s a pre-school where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn’t right.
That’s when she gets a visit from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls “Grandmother,” who tells her: “You have three months to save him.” The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it’s as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau.

There was just too much happening. Henry crammed way too much into this book. There are elements of time-travel, alternate dimensions, adoption, Native American culture, identity, romance, science and even questioning the existence of God. It’s just too much.

1/4 of the book was various Native American folklore. There were many pages explaining the science of the brain, dreams and theories on time-travel and alternate dimensions. It started to distract me from the story – which wasn’t very smooth to begin with. 

Also, there was definitely insta-love, which doesn’t work. This book is heavily dependent on the romance, it’s basically the entire story. So, when I’m not convinced of the romance, the story doesn’t succeed.

The story focuses on Natalie Cleary – who has to be one of my least favorite female protagonists. I found her to be insufferably immature and selfish. Most of the decisions she makes are purely based on what she wants with no consideration of how they may impact the people around her. One of the people who loved her the most, she treats terribly and believes it’s justified. It is mainly that relationship that caused me to lose respect for her.

Also that after being a horrible person in that relationship, she falls instantly in love with the next cute boy – completely contradicting herself.

The writing wasn’t terrible and is probably the only redeeming factor for me. Outside of the science mumbo jumbo and the Native American stories – Henry writes really well. There are a lot of good quotes that I got out of this one.

However, even with some good writing, the pacing was off. Mainly due to the enormous info-dumps throughout the story that still leave you confused.

I’m including this section after already having written the review. I recently learned that the Native American representation in this book is incredibly inaccurate. I am not knowledgeable on this topic but you can read about some of the issues here and here.

Well, if you can’t tell from my Goodreads Progress Updates or this review – this book wasn’t my favorite (maybe that’s an understatement?). It tried to be too many things all at once and it didn’t work. The main character was unlikeable since she was incredibly selfish and blind to other people’s feelings. Also, the amount of info-dumps and side stories were very distracting, I’m still confused. Overall, I wasn’t fond of this book.

Rating Report
Plot
Characters
Writing
World Building
Overall:	2.5 / 5