Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos

I loved this book. The first chapter was a little too filled with explanations, disclaimers, and asides, but get through that and the writing was superb. The author is an award winning poet, and this was her first novel, so maybe she had trouble reigning it in. Just as a heads up, she also uses the f-word. It's interesting to me that when she does, it seems to be clustered with other ones, then go hundreds of pages with out any obsenities. Just so you know when you come to them, that they aren't going to appear on every page.

I couldn't put this book down. Do I say that too much? But it was exactly what I was in the mood for. I guess celebrating my anniversary, and then Valentine's put me in the mood for a book about LOVE. This book covers so many different kinds and stages of love.

The story is told in alternating chapters. The first character is Cornelia. I loved her. I'm not an expert in cinema, so many of her references were lost on me. That being said I really liked her point of view, and clever remarks. But the whole thing isn't too clever if you're getting worried it will be one of those over-wordy, over-scripted stories.

I also loved Clare, the 11-year-old co-protagonist. Her chapters are equally well-written, and while she is brave and smart, she is written as an 11-year-old. There were several moments when she didn't understand what was going on, and the conversation she has with Teo walking down the street at the end is exactly what I think a girl her age would try to do.

This book was perfect for me. It is definetly an adult book (there is S-E-X), but the adolescent insight and coming of age aspects were exactly what I like to read. And did I mention how much I love this author's writing style?

Thanks to Betsy and Amy for reviewing this on GoodReads!

Some quotes:

"She put her faith in the crunch of bread, in the saltiness of butter on her tongue; she took their goldenness into her body and, afterward, felt that her soul had been restored."

"In my experience, people love what they love. They just do." This is in explanation about why it's useless to argue about which Shakespeare is best.

"Clare understood suddenly. She's the main character in her story, just like I'm the main character in mine."

"There are people whose deaths make you ache with sadness. And then there are people whose deaths prevent the sun from rising, deaths that turn the walls black in every room you walk through, deaths that send storm clouds and a wail swirling through your head so that you can't hear music and you can't recognize your furniture or your own face in the mirror."

"There are facts and then there is knowledge that has nothing to do with fact."

"I think things out by talking." ME TOO!

"I've always been on the side of love."