Book Reflection — Always by Sarah Jio

Some books wait patiently.

Why I Read Always

Always had been standing in my library for years — one of those novels I bought because the back cover whispered something promising… and then never opened. I used to do that often. Collect stories with intention, but no follow-through.

When I decided to take my own writing seriously, I understood something simple and uncomfortable: if I wanted to write better, I had to read more. Until then, my shelves had mostly been filled with self-development books. Learning, optimizing, improving — always improving. Fiction felt indulgent. Almost irresponsible.

But I committed. Because I’m a good girl. And because everyone said it mattered.

I had planned to start with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, but waiting two days for the book to arrive felt unbearable. If you know one thing about me, know this: when my mind is made up, it needs to happen now. So I went back to my shelves, searching for something that could gently pull me into the habit of reading again wile waiting for this Holy Grail.

That’s when I picked up Always.

It wasn’t a bestseller — always it was written by best selling author Sarah Jio. Still, it wasn’t loud like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo could be. But the back cover hooked me and I trusted it. I was looking for romance. Something easy. Something that wouldn’t ask me to stop every five minutes to underline, analyze, or “learn.” I wanted a story that would carry me instead.

And it did.

What This Book Is About (Without Spoilers)

From the first pages, I was in. The plot is simple — an old love resurfaces in the most unexpected way after years of silence. A love story interrupted by misunderstanding, time, and absence. You quickly realize that what was lost might never be repaired… or so it seems.

Sarah Jio’s back-and-forth between the 1990s and the late 2000s works beautifully. The writing is fluid, accessible, comforting. I didn’t have much fiction experience then, but I didn’t need it. The story held me. I wanted to know what would happen next.

What stayed with me most was nostalgia.

I slipped easily into the heroine’s skin. Maybe because her story echoed something deeply personal. I, too, had a first love — the kind you would sacrifice everything for. I was sixteen. He was nineteen. We loved each other fiercely for four years, then separated. We met again four years later, changed, older, but still remembering exactly who we were together.

He is my husband today.

My life isn’t as dramatic as the novel, but it could have been. And I don’t know if I would have survived that version of the story. I recognized the ache of knowing the man you are about to say yes to is not the love of your life. The quiet violence of convincing yourself otherwise. The slow inner unraveling that happens when truth pulls you apart from the inside.

That’s where Always resonated most for me — not in its plot twists, but in that intimate contradiction: loving someone deeply, even when they are no longer present.

I also felt the weight of family expectations pressing in on love, that suffocating sense that decisions no longer belong solely to you.

What Worked for Me

I believe deeply in fate. In timing. In the invisible choreography of love. I trust that separation, even when devastating, is sometimes both the best and the worst thing that can happen. Reading this story stirred those reflections — not painfully, but tenderly.

Stylistically, this book played like a movie in my head. Scene after scene unfolded visually. I kept turning pages, not because I needed to be surprised, but because I wanted to stay inside the atmosphere. It was exactly what I needed at that moment.

Compared to Call Me by Your Name, Always offers something very different. Less introspection. More serendipity. It’s softer, warmer, more reassuring. If Call Me by Your Name is a summer film you watch alone. It’s raw, feral, slightly uncomfortable. Always, on the contrary is a winter movie. One you watch wrapped in a blanket, hot chocolate in hand. A story that comforts rather than provokes.

It doesn’t try to reinvent the plot. It doesn’t need to. Like Call Me by Your Name, the power isn’t in originality of story, but in tone, emotion, and how time is handled.

When I closed the book, I felt satisfied. Proud, even. Proud to have finished it so quickly. Proud to discover that fiction could hold me this way. That reading didn’t always have to be productive to be meaningful.

It lingered just long enough — then gently let me go, making room for the next novel.

Always is a book I would recommend to anyone who loves comforting romances, who wants an easy, transporting read, and who still believes in first loves.

This book is for someone who believes in soulmates.