Evening Everyone,

Well it feels like it’s been forever since I last posted. September was such a write off for me. I was busy with various different things (mostly work), I got poorly and I was in a permanent state of feeling tired. Now all that is done and dusted, I won’t say I’m back to reading as much as I was during the summer, but I’ve certainly been getting more done which is exactly where I want to be.

Book 📖

Thank you to @bookandtonic for this advanced copy of The Three Loves of Sebastian Cooper by @zoefolbigg in return for an honest review. The Three Loves of Sebastian Cooper was published on 27th September 2022 and you can get a copy here.

Description 🔖

Family and friends are gathered for the funeral of Sebastian Cooper and that includes the three women in his life. Clair who has been around for the longest and has been Seb’s only wife. She’s the mother to his two children and and she is furious with Seb for leaving them without their father, but she is also confused and feeling lost; not knowing her place. Desiree is who Seb left Clair for. She is heart broken and keen to keep herself to herself whilst she questions if she should even be at the funeral. Finally, Noemie, Sebastian’s latest lover and the last one to see him alive. She is by far the most open and noisiest mourner in attendance at the funeral.

These are three women who all loved Sebastian in their own way. Three women who are all mad at him for dying. Three women who’s lives have changed forever. Except only one of them was the true love of Seb’s life and only one of them knew the truth about what happened.

General Thoughts 🤔

My first impression of this book was that it was probably wise to grab some tissues, because I was going to get upset. I hadn’t read the blurb and had gone in blind, so starting the entire story with Seb’s funeral was a bit of a shock to me. However, I quickly settled in and found myself embroiled in the good, bad and ugly that was these characters.

I really enjoyed Part 1 of the book and was intrigued about where the story was going to go. I felt somewhat let down by Part 2 of the book as it didn’t feel like a whole lot happened and I felt a little bit like I was going through the motions. However Part 3 picked up again and ended up being my favourite section of the book; the ending especially.

Characters 👫👭👬

Although there were quite a number of characters in this story, I didn’t find it difficult to follow who was who and where the relationships were. There were some characters that I really liked, some that I didn’t like and some that I liked to dislike. For the purposes of this review, I’m going to concentrate on the three main women from the book.

Out of the three women, Desiree was my favourite, but this was likely because she was the woman I can relate to most. She was career driven and ambitious and I think she had put a bit of an emotional barrier around herself. Until she met Sebastian. Even then, her walls didn’t completely fall. I was all in on their relationship and rooting for them, even though they didn’t start off in the most conventional of ways.

I disliked Noemie. She was narcissistic, sly, dramatic, selfish and a brat. I was disappointed in Seb for letting their relationship get as far as it did as from an outsiders perspective, it seemed doomed from the beginning.

Clair was the one person I thought could see that Noemie was completely wrong for Seb. I didn’t feel strongly about Clair, but I definitely didn’t dislike her. Her and Seb were childhood sweethearts, but they turned into different people and grew apart in their adulthood. Granted; Seb did not handle the situation well at all but I think Clair was unable to admit that their relationship was troubled long before they finally separated.

Writing Style ✍️

This is the first book that I have read by this author and I really enjoyed her writing style and tone. The story wasn’t complicated or difficult to follow but it was engaging and made me want to keep reading to find out what paths the characters were going to end up following.

I really liked the switch between timelines chapter by chapter. It kept the story moving along at a reasonable pace and the chapters in the past helped to provide context as to why the characters were behaving a certain way in the present.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖

This was a book that for me, started strong, dipped in the middle but peaked at the end. I felt like I got to know these three women like they were friends or acquaintances and there were times I wanted to reach into the pages and give some of them a good shake. But I also loved them (ok, maybe one of them not so much). The ending sucker punched me and I am still reeling over it; talk about bittersweet. All in all, this was a good book to get my reading juices flowing again and I would definitely recommend it for some cuddled up weekend reading.

😍😍😍😩😩