Sweet, lovable Adam was hard not to fall for, too, even when he was off gallivanting through Langford, and Evans managed to perfectly capture the bittersweet feelings of first love. Their hurts were my hurts their successes were my successes. It was emotional, yes, and that’s the biggest boon for me: I felt emotionally invested with these people from the start. It’s hard for me to say exactly what I loved about this story. And when they eventually reunite, nothing is the same. Through a succession of heartbreaks, heartaches and confusion, Adam and Tess lose touch. Tess was a character with whom I could identify immediately: proud but a bit confused about where she’s headed in life adventurous, but still with a yearning to find “home.” Adam has been her steadfast friend since they were children, growing up in town together, and everyone assumed they’d eventually find love in each other - but not so. What I wanted David Nicholls’ One Day to be - a tale of best friends over the years, reuniting and loving and losing - was all found here, and what a thoroughly enjoyable book it was. Harriet Evans’ I Remember You was wildly entertaining, colorful, poignant, heartbreaking - basically everything I look for in a good novel.

But Adam isn’t himself these days, and when a final secret comes to light, changing the very nature of everything in town - and Adam himself - can Tess embrace a new life? Or is she destined to flounder in the old one - alone? Torn between her long-ago feelings for Adam and attentive, exciting Peter, Tess flounders. She eventually leads her pupils to Rome on an end-of-term field trip, and it’s there that she meets Peter - a charismatic, gorgeous American who sees something in Tess that she doesn’t yet notice in herself. Other than begin teaching a course on classics at a local college. Tess’s heart breaks at the thought of finding her oldest, dearest friend at a stand-still, but what can she do? The meadows have been controlled for years by Leonora Mortmain, the daunting and severe old woman who has taken up permanent residence as an antagonistic old crone in the lives of Langford’s residents.Īfter many years apart, Tess returns to town from London and finds Adam - handsome, gawky, intelligent - living the same old life has has since the death of his mother, the larger-than-life Phillippa. Best friends Tess Tennant and Adam Smith grew up in the tiny English town of Langford, made famous for its connection to author Jane Austen - and for its gorgeous vistas, including the historic water meadows.

The love of her life by harriet evans