After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid {Summer Reading Challenge Review}

This post is sponsored by BookSparksPR in honor of their 

4th annual Summer Reading Challenge. Check out all the details here.

Title : After I Do

Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid

Publisher: Washington Square Press

Release Date: July 1, 2014

Summary from GoodReads:

From the author of Forever, Interrupted—hailed by Sarah Jio as "moving, gorgeous, and at times heart-wrenching"—comes a breathtaking new novel about modern marriage, the depth of family ties, and the year that one remarkable heroine spends exploring both.

When Lauren and Ryan’s marriage reaches the breaking point, they come up with an unconventional plan. They decide to take a year off in the hopes of finding a way to fall in love again. One year apart, and only one rule: they cannot contact each other. Aside from that, anything goes.

Lauren embarks on a journey of self-discovery, quickly finding that her friends and family have their own ideas about the meaning of marriage. These influences, as well as her own healing process and the challenges of living apart from Ryan, begin to change Lauren’s ideas about monogamy and marriage. She starts to question: When you can have romance without loyalty and commitment without marriage, when love and lust are no longer tied together, what do you value? What are you willing to fight for?

This is a love story about what happens when the love fades. It’s about staying in love, seizing love, forsaking love, and committing to love with everything you’ve got. And above all, After I Do is the story of a couple caught up in an old game—and searching for a new road to happily ever after.

Quotes:

"That was always the way it was with us. The I love yous and I'm sorrys, the I'll never do that agains and the I don't know what I'd do without yous always eclipsed the thing we were fighting about in the first place. " - pg 23

"We had plenty of time to decide what we wanted. We were still young. And yet I couldn't help but feel a type of disappointment that I'd never felt before: a sense that the future might not turn out exactly the way we pictured it." - pg. 40 

My Take: I've been anticipating reading this book. The book has been all over the place, and I just couldn't wait to read it. 
And it did not disappoint. I got sucked in to the love that Lauren and Ryan had for each other. I feel in love at the same time they feel in love. I was happy when they were happy. And at in those moments when they fought and their relationship started unraveling, I was heartbroken.
In today's world, sadly the divorce rate is higher than it was generations before. And Lauren and Ryan's marriage seems to be heading toward divorce. They have been arguing over little things more often, getting mad at each other. 
Lauren and Ryan soon enough realize that their marriage was not working. They decided to separate. They wanted to use the time apart in order to find a way to fall back in love with each other. During that separation they both learn a lot about themselves and their relationship. 
I loved this book because Taylor Jenkins Reid, doesn't put a blame on one person in the relationship. Instead this book paints a realistic picture of a relationship that is real to a lot of couples a days. I loved it. It was full of emotion, good and bad. It's a book that will make you smile, laugh and maybe even tear up. I highly recommend it!!!  

My other Summer Reading Challenge reviews: Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan Cure for the Common Breakup by Beth Kendrick The One and Only by Emily Giffin The Witch of Belladonna Bay by Suzanne Palmeiri The Revealed by Jessica Hickman The Walk-In Closet by Abdi Nazemian Find my other reviews here: Book Thoughts