Book Review: Love You, Always by Lauren Lacey

February 26, 2025

I am going to start by saying, do not listen to what they have to say about this on Goodreads.

We follow the story of Parker Waylen and Jackson Sands in a small town called Beverly Mills, Georgia. We see their friendship develop as children and then blossom into romance in teen hood and crumble around them in young adulthood. This is a story of forgiveness, redemption, friendship, and soulmates. There is love and loss and grief and addition in the pages of this book.

Recently, I got involved in not one, but two book clubs, and I suggested this book because I had seen it on an Instagramers account that I follow. She even has a wonderful review of it on Goodreads, and so I thought that this was going to be a great book to suggest to my bookclub. I am so embarrassed. This book was self published and I don’t think it passed through a single other persons hands before she sent it off as a finished manuscript. Never in my life have I claimed to be a good editor, or really even an acceptable editor, but I could have edited this better in elementary school. Again, I want to say that this is a unedited blog and there are going to be some flaws because, I’ll be honest, I don’t think anyone actually reads these, but she knew that people were going to be reading her book and still she did not have anyone edit it. If she did, they were very unkind to her. This all being said, I love the concept of the book, it is a childhood friends to lovers over the corse of many many years; very my speed. I think she was going somewhere with it, and I do think she has potential as an author, but I think this might be one of the worst books I have ever read. There was so much that made me cringe and the spicy scenes just made me uncomfortable. If someone were to edit the book, and help her with some phrasing, I think this could be a really lovely story ( and I think it would be about half the size), but how it is right now, I would not suggest this book to anyone.

I have since unfollowed the instagramer that I got this recommendation from because she give this disaster of a book four and a half stars out of five.