With or Without You touches on trauma, love and heartbreak, and the character growth as you become older. Stella and Simon have been in love and happily married for 20 years, until after a shocking accident, Stella falls into a coma. During the time Stella is in a coma, we get the perspective of Simon and Stella’s friend, Libby, as they navigate ways to get Stella to wake up. I gave With or Without You 3.5 star, liking the overall story and plot, however, there were simply a few holes here and there. First, while I did get the ARC of this book from Algonquin Books, I may have left it for a whole year until finally picking this up.

Book: With or Without You by Caroline Leavitt
Series: Standalone
Publication Date: August 4, 2020
(Thank you NetGalley for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review)
**While this book has already been out I did receive it early so thank you again NetGalley!**
Tags: Adult, trauma, contemporary, heartbreak, relationship, character change
Links: Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository | Thrift Books
Read: December 7, 2021 to December 15, 2021

Welcome to my Blog tour Review for With or Without You!

After almost twenty years together, Stella and Simon are starting to run into problems. An up-and-coming rock musician when they first met, Simon has been clinging to dreams of fame even as the possibility of it has grown dimmer, and now that his band might finally be on the brink again, he wants to go on the road, leaving Stella behind. But when she falls into a coma on the eve of his departure, he has to make a choice between stardom and his wife—and when she wakes a different person, with an incredible artistic talent of her own, the two of them must examine what it is that they really want.
 
Unapologetically honest and intimately written, With or Without You is a contemporary story of what happens to relationships as the people in them change, whether slowly or in one cataclysmic swoop.

Spoiler Free Review

With or Without You touches on trauma, love and heartbreak, and the character growth as you become older. Stella and Simon have been in love and happily married for 20 years, until after a shocking accident, Stella falls into a coma. During the time Stella is in a coma, we get the perspective of Simon and Stella’s friend, Libby, as they navigate ways to get Stella to wake up.

I gave With or Without You 3.5 star, liking the overall story and plot, however, there were simply a few holes here and there. First, while I did get the ARC of this book from Algonquin Books, I may have left it for a whole year until finally picking this up. Ultimately, I decided to pick up the audiobook and that was the right decision. I wasn’t feeling motivated to read the eBook so the audiobook was the right decision and the narrator did a terrific job and I would give her a 5/5 rating for the narration. Other than that, this book was good and left me on the fence between 3 or a 4 star because it was written really well and touches on simply growing older and changing. Although for Stella, she wakes up from her coma finding that she has artistic talents.

In the beginning of With or Without You, Stella is a practicing nurse and Simon is a rockstar hopeful and while his band, Mightycondria (I think that is how you spell it, it may be wrong), takes off, because of Stella being in the coma, he can’t join in the fame and glory. Simon must learn to deal with growing up and out of the rockstar phase and being a responsible adult and putting himself to work, taking care of the bills, and keeping the house clean. In the few months Stella is in this coma, all of them change; Stella, Simon, and Libby, whom we get acquainted to in the coma period.

I liked this book as it really touches up on relationships growing out of love and taking examples on how people change and their interests change and really not forcing people to give up their dreams. In the beginning, we are told Stella mainly gave up being a full time nurse in order to join Simon on tour with his band, giving up her dream as a nurse, and then slowly, at the start of the book, their interests are different, their goals are different.

This was such a good part of the book and I really enjoyed the aspect of character changes for each and every one of the three characters. I think I like Simon the best, especially his character growth. In the beginning we see Simon stuck in his rockstar immature ways, but he was by far my favorite because of how much he grew.

My issue with Stella was that she seemed to act rather immature after getting out of the coma. I just found her character to be too selfish and she never really considered Simon’s part of the relationship, especially her actions after getting out of the coma and trying to figure out how to recover from it. She just didn’t sit right with me and I just wasn’t a fan of hers.

Overall, this book was good and although this was rather slow, it picked up and I really started to get invested in it. Although the ending was a little rushed and I would have like a little more content towards the end, I did have a good time reading this and found 3.5 stars good. Just that my main issue was Stella and the ending and the starting pacing of this book.

I hope you guys have a great day, please like and comment down below if you enjoyed this book as well or if you plan on reading it!

Loves,

Veronica Chen