Meant to Be Mine
Book: Meant to Be Mine by Hannah Orenstein
Synopsis:
What if you knew exactly when you’d meet the love of your life? Edie Meyer knows. When her Grandma Gloria was a young woman, she had a vision of the exact day she would meet her soul mate — and then Grandpa Ray showed up.
Since then, Gloria has accurately predicted the day every single member of the family has met their match. Edie’s day arrives on June 24, 2022, when she’s twenty-nine years old. She has been waiting for it half her life. That morning, she boards an airplane to her twin sister’s surprise engagement, and when a handsome musician sits beside her, she knows it’s meant to be.
But fate comes with more complications than Edie expected and she can’t fight the nagging suspicion that her perfect guy doesn’t have perfect timing. After a tragedy and a shocking revelation rock Edie’s carefully constructed world, she’s forced to consider whether love chooses us, as simple as destiny, or if we choose it ourselves.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
My Thoughts: This book struck a fantastic balance between comfy and delightfully unexpected. At first it really seems like it’s going to be a straightforward love story where the main device is finding out how Edie’s grandmother could really possibly actually have such a gift, but as you read the characters become more believable as humans. Gloria’s gift feels less like a mystical illusion and more like a quirky trait. And Edie becomes less concerned with following the fairy dust and actually gives herself a chance to see the world in all its real colors.
I was pleasantly surprised by the direction Hannah Orenstein ultimately went with this story and it made me like the entire book more than I would’ve had it gone down the predictable path.
My one qualm was the decision to include COVID in the setting. I understand that the book was written in 2020 and back then nobody thought we’d still be dealing with the pandemic in 2022 so everyone talks about it in the past tense. I would’ve preferred to keep the book entirely in a pandemic-free alternate universe instead of the pseudo-pandemic-free limbo it lives in.
I also must note, as is so common with Hannah Orenstein’s work, the characters were charmingly Jewish and the holidays and rituals included in the book made me feel comfortable and at home as a Jewish reader.
If you want your own copy of Meant to Be Mine you can buy it here (beginning June 7) or borrow it from your local library.
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