Georgie, All Along: An Uplifting and Unforgettable Love Story

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Important note: Levi is also the older brother of Georgie's high school mega crush, Evan, and it makes her feel very confused that she's now so intensely attracted to his black sheep older brother and can barely remember Evan's golden boy face. I am not usually one who goes for that sort of thing but with the romance factored in Clayborn nails it. To pick a point in your life where things went down one path, and imagine what it would be like if you took another. All in all, this read like a shallow “dramedy” rather than the romantic comedy I expected but this novel failed to realise its potential. Georgie, who has made a career out of fulfilling others’ needs, find herself jobless and back in the last place she really wants to be, to help her pregnant best friend.

While it may have started slow, it picked up in a big way and left me with huge hearts (and a few tears) in my eyes. And what I find it particularly fascinating the way she tends to use typical hero “tropes” (the hero of Luck of the Draw is a taciturn alpha, Reid in Love Lettering is Mr Buttoned Up, and Levi is, of course, Grumpy) to gently interrogate the way socially constructed gender codes shape and affect her heroes. And, to be blunter, the set-up still didn’t blow me away, even after I’d finished reading Georgie and fallen deeply, madly in love with all the characters and their lives and their quirks.

But in summary some of the things I loved: both Georgie’s and Levi, with all my heart, the gorgeous, gorgeous writing, the setting, Georgie’s benignly chaotic parents, Georgie’s relationship with her best friend, Bel, which is deeply loving and supportive but also complicated as most long-standing friendships are, the broader cast who are mostly characterised just enough to feel fully-rounded, Levi’s neurotic dog who constantly farts at inopportune moments, the way that, while the book sort of has a villain (or at least an antagonist), the character is never centralised in the lives of the people he’s hurt, the fact that Georgie and Levi’s relationship is simultaneously quiet and breathtakingly romantic, the conclusions Georgie comes to at the end of the book and the book’s broader exploration of its themes and questions. Compared to something like, say Love Lettering, which has a more self-consciously artful style, reflecting the way the heroine perceives the world, Georgie, All Along has a deceptive simplicity to it which means it bounces along very readable and very funny (dropping lines like this like they’re nothing: " 'Okay, so,' I finally say, which everyone knows is the agreed-upon code for best friends when one of them is about to drop some kind of bomb.

Georgie goes back to her hometown to reinvent herself, at least that is what she tells herself since she has no idea what and how she is supposed to do that. I loved that the book told the story of two youngish (compared to me) people growing and learning to love themselves, people can learn a thing or two from this couple. Kate Clayborn’s writing is magnetic and witty and expansive, and her characters feel as real and solid to me as my own limbs.This was a surprise to me, as I hadn’t read this author before and was in a place where I have just read one of the best books this year, so this one I wasn’t expecting much, and it blew me away.

As it slowly reveals his troubled past, there's a bit of a mystery regarding the ties to his family. And something I really appreciated about Georgie, All Along is that - while it inspects and questions and deepens its own relationship to this well-trodden genre staple - you never get the sense that it's looking down on it, or denying why it attracts readers. He, too, has come a long way: From local troublemaker to local dock builder, Levi rose to many occasions - just not confronting his toxic father and, thus, he’s also estranged from his siblings for no good reason at all. The novel isn't just about love--it's about communication both in romantic relationships and in friendships.There she meets Levi, older brother of her high school crush, and initial awkwardness and wariness gradually becomes something more.

Unfortunately—or serendipitously—Georgie’s parents have forgotten to mention that they’ve already organised a house-sitter—a local named Levi, who is a bit of a hermit and a man of few words, dealing with a bad reputation that’s followed him from his youth into his thirties. But I think - as with Georgie - the author is very thoughtful in showing the reader what elements of Levi's personality are external misunderstanding and gender stereotype, and which elements merit a much more thorough grounding via backstory and exploration and understanding. As the two make their way through her wish list, Georgie begins to realize that what she truly wants might not be in the pages of her diary after all, but right by her side – if only they can both find a way to let go of the pasts that hold them back. And it seems that she does live there… but it was written like a low budget movie character might speak in a Southern accent. A wise and witty new novel that echoes with timely questions about love, career, reconciling with the past, and finding your path while knowing your true worth.I love the delightfully whimsical way this book is written and tell me… is there anything better then butterfly inducing banter! It's not a book without hardship—there’s genuine suffering in Levi’s background and Georgie’s sense of herself as blank and ambitionless can be hard to read at times—but it’s mostly a profoundly warm, hopeful, and accepting book. Sidebar that nobody asked for: I actually think though that, maybe, while this book starts out with time and "going back" as its major theme, it gently morphs that into being about taking up space and finding place? iterativeness, for lack of a better word, really resonated with my experience of a longer-term relationship as well.