Only Love Can Hurt Like This

January 9, 2023
At the start of this middling romance from Toon (Someone I Used to Know), architect Wren decides she needs a break from quaint Bury St. Edmunds, England, and sets out to spend the summer with her father on his new pick-it-yourself farm in rural Indiana. She’s nervous about the trip, as she’s spent very little time with her father and his new family since her parents divorced when she was six. Luckily, her half sister is more than ready to introduce her to the town’s limited entertainments, which puts her in the path of two handsome but brooding brothers, Anders and Jonas. At first, IndyCar engineer Anders’s taciturn and combative personality puts Wren off, but she warms to him when she learns his prickliness is driven by his concern for Jonas’s poor mental health. Anders has a heavy secret of his own, however, and it could halt his relationship with Wren before it can fully take off. It strains credulity that the small community wouldn’t already know Anders’s secret, making the reveal both unbelievable and jarring. Toon smooths out that rough plot twist with highly readable, emotional prose and a focus on how familial relationships evolve over time. It’s not particularly memorable, but it does what it sets out to do.