How To Love by Katie Cotungo

Elsie Winfield

Pre-AP English

March 11 2015

I read How To Love by Katie Cotungo. This book was very well written and I personally really enjoyed her style of writing. The author has a very descriptive style of writing, she writes about the small details which allows you to clearly see what she is writing about . A sentence that show her style is when she's describing what's is happening when the main character, Reena sees Sawyer for the first time in a year “Water from the storm outside drips from my all purpose braid and onto the dinghy linoleum; a tiny puddle forms around my feet” (1). She adds small descriptive sentences like this which I believe gives you a clear picture and makes the book more enjoyable to read.

A  really interesting part about the book  How to love is that the author writes before and after Reena gets pregnant. Because she writes the book this way it seems like you're reading two books in one and keeps the book very interesting. How to Love is a love story but it also touches on very serious topics such as teen pregnancy.  The quote “The hideous thing is this: I want to forgive him. Even after everything, I do. A baby before my 17th birthday and a future as lonely as the surface of the moon and still the sight of him feels like a homecoming, like a song I used to know but somehow forgot.”(142) In this quote there is a lot of  romance but it still talks about why she shouldn't forgive him because he left her when she was pregnant.

I believe everyone would enjoy this book because its very well written and talks about serious topics while still being lighthearted. This book is mostly focused to teenage girls and is a very good for girls to read. Its a good book for teenage girls because it talks about the consequences of getting pregnant as teenager and how it stops you from living out your dreams and in the book this is something  the author talks about often. Even though the book is focused towards teenage girls its still a very universal book for anyone and I believe everyone would enjoy it.