5.0/5.0 stars
It gave me such a beautiful perspective of things, as well as such a beautiful description for things I hold as unshakable values to myself.

"I've had a lot of bad things happen to me. I think sometimes the key to happiness is framing those things in a different way"

"This is the thing nobody tells you about The One. How they're timeless. How the moment they pop up again you're right where you left of."

"You can't help someone unless they want to be helped."

"You can't escape yourself. You are not what happened to you. You are what you do next. You turn around, you face it and you fix it."

WRITING
From the beginning I felt like I was watching everything in front of me. The descriptions, the lines, the feelings, the scenes. Everything was wonderfully put together with a flow that kept me going fast enough without realising it. It is easy to say that the writing got my interest to the story since it was anything but slow and dull.
Not once I felt like it was getting boring or hard to follow. The scenes well very well put together to a point where I really enjoyed every one of them.

STORY
I have not read anything like it before. The plot of it was something pleasantly new for me and I was all in for it.
It had evolution, not stopping at a certain point to overanalyze it without a reason.
The meaning behind this whole book was deeper than any other rom-com I've read. If we call it rom-com. I LOVED IT. It was the true, real, deep meaning of a healthy love story. It brought me to tears feeling happy for the ways they handled their relationship and themselves.
It teaches self-respect, self-boundaries, respect for the other person, broken people willing to heal themselves. This is the real world. And there was not better way to picture it than that.

JUSTIN
At first even though I liked Justin, he was not my type. And so I was a little skeptical about my attachment to the story.
As I was reading though he became very dear to me.
I admired his character. He is a good,high-value man. A solid rock for his family. He is clear and brutally honest about his wants and he is not willing to back out of them for any less than that. He creates a safe space for anyone around him.
He taught me to be open about the possiblity that even though at first I might see things in a man that are not really my way of acting, beaneath that there might be the high value man I so dearly expect my soulmate to be. Because like Justin, I am not willing to lower my standards either.
"I wanted an actual chance. And to have that, she'd have to meet me where I was"

EMMA
I understood her pretty quickly. People pleaser, emotionally distant, runner and a child longing for affection long gone from a parental figure.
It broke my heart seeing how a parent can treat their child like that. With such apathy.
But what I am so glad I saw her will to fight for herself. To stand up and face her childhood.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!SPOILER THOUGHTS!!!!!!!!!!

THEIR RELATIONSHIP

What I loved in their relationship even before it existed, was their straight forward honesty. No-filter honesty, about their feelings and emotions.
It gave such clarity to both of them. They were both people with values and boundaries which made them be clear with one another about their limits.
Justin's unwillingnes to kiss her first was a clear image of how it meant so much more to him. A statement of his feelings and how he was not willing to lower his expectations for just a fling.
When you've never experienced a feeling like love being given to you, it is easy to run from it. If you never had it, you never had the fear of letting it go. You never had the need to fight to keep it. Emma's decision to take a step back to work on herself broke my heart but I respected it. Not all things can be fixed in our current situation. And sometimes, staying without facing them first might get in the way of our happiness. Sometimes we need to make hard, difficult decisions in order to get healed. It might hurt. But the reward is sweet.
Their decisions eventually saved both of them from many heartbreaks, fears and eventually the consequence of losing each other for good.
This is a healthy, mature, grown relationship. And I really thank Jimenez for writing about the real deal.