Before I even start this review of The Love of My Next Life, let me say that narrators J. F. Harding & Lidia Dornet may just be the best readers I have ever listened to. I both read the book and listened to the audiobook. The book is amazing; the audiobook is extraordinary – they bring the characters vividly to life with all the tension, emotion, anger and heat.

Author Brit Benson is one talented writer. She takes a pretty standard premise – enemies to lovers, teenager angst and love – and makes you buy into it 100%. It’s one of those books that makes you want to read (or listen) slowly to enjoy every minute but leaves you anxious to finish because you just have to know what happens, and makes you want to stop at the same time because you are afraid there is tragedy and heartache to come. The narration is perfect. Lidia Dornet makes Lennon sound just like you think she should: not innocent but not experienced, smart, talented, not quite fitting in with best friend Clare and her group, close to her father but secretly resentful of how her mother left them, and so used to hating Clare’s brother Macon that it takes her awhile to realize there are actual feelings between them, and that maybe he just needs someone to believe in him. J. F. Harding’s Macon is spot on: the bad boy “loser” is there but so is the pain and guilt and sadness and loneliness and fear – and the strong, strong feelings for Lennon. Even the way he says, “Macon” at the beginning of each chapter amplifies his character. It’s quiet and rushed and impatient, gritty and tender at the same time, and makes you believe in the good guy deeply hidden somewhere in there. The smart, talented resourceful young man who was treated so horribly as a boy that he may be beyond hope.

It's real and relatable. Sure, they’re “just kids” but they show the lie of “it’s just puppy love.” These are serious emotions. And high school isn’t always some happy, sunny, safe place. There is real danger there.

Lennon meets Macon and Claire when she’s 9, shortly after her mother’s overdose, when she and her father Trent move to town. Macon is obviously the troublemaker kid in class, the one held back, and his teasing of Lennon begins right then. Claire latches on to Lennon, and it’s already clear that she wishes her brother just wasn’t around – he’s no good.

Lennon is the good girl, the people pleaser, always putting on the “everything is just fine” face, not wanting to make waves, hiding her love of painting from her father because she is afraid it will remind him of her mother and upset him, always assuring him she’s fine with his absence for military missions.

Claire is that best friend who is really impersonating a best friend: demands loyalty and care she never intends to give back, is jealous, a bully, bossy, never really considering Lennon’s needs or feelings but doing a good job of pretending to. It is hard to warm up to her; I fear it will never be possible.

Macon is bad, or so he believes. So it becomes a self-fulfilling belief: if he’s bad he has to act bad. His father physically and emotionally abused him from the time he was very young, and by the time we come into the story that bad dad has left their mom, Andrea, and Macon and Claire and they’re barely hanging on. Macon is sure it’s all his fault and that he’s always letting their mom down. Claire never misses an opportunity to reinforce that belief. She was Daddy’s Girl and Macon took that away. As she grows older her wish that Macon will just go away forever gets stronger and stronger.

The focus of The Love of My Next Life is on their senior year of high school. Lennon is 17, Macon is 19. Not an easy time. Hookups, parties, drugs, alcohol, sneaking around – and a gigantic pull of something between Macon and Lennon. She fights it. He can’t stop being addicted to his bad behavior but is always in the background, looking out for Lennon – and proclaiming they belong together. Trent and Andrea, after years as friends and neighbors, reveal their love and get married. Claire is ecstatic to have Lennon as her “real sister.” Lennon feels betrayed and Macon is not feeling brotherly. Prom night is wonderful. Until it’s not.

We know at the start of the book that this is Book 1 of a duet and we shouldn’t expect the Happily Ever After we want. Even so, there is so much tension and angst and emotion and tragedy that it’s hard not to think the “next life” of the title is really going to be a next life and that the ultimate bad things will happen in this book. Finds you turning pages faster and faster while at the same time dreading what that next page will reveal.

The Love of My Next Life is a satisfying if heart-pounding read. The characters are perfectly drawn, authentic, compelling. As noted, the narration is beyond perfect. There are many little scenes that will tug at your heart and bring a tear to your eye: Trent asking Macon to look out for Lennon while he’s away on a mission and she stays at Andrea’s. Little Macon taking that so seriously, felling so good because someone believes in him – until Claire makes up something to get him into trouble and demands he leave Lennon alone. She belongs to Claire; he’s already ruined their lives and she needs Lennon. And Macon guiltily, sadly agreeing to it. Mason finding the pink butterfly clip that Lennon loved and threw out because Claire bullied her into thinking it was part of the “kiddy stuff” she needed to get rid of and slipping it into his pocket. Trent telling Macon at his bachelor party that “You’re a good kid, and you’re going to be a good man.” And of course some really, really steamy scenes that seem real and natural and placed in exactly the right places in the story.

Thanks to Home Cooked Books and the author for providing an audio copy of The Love of My Next Life. I thoroughly enjoyed it, cried, laughed, worried and sighed all through it, and could not wait to get to the rest of the duet. I am voluntarily leaving this review and all opinions are my own.

Note: there is some excellent bonus material you don’t want to miss available at the author’s website, authorbritbenson.com. ( )