Teaser Tuesday: When We Collided by Emery Lord

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books And A Beat.
To play along just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

When We Collided by Emery Lord.

When We Collided – Bloomsbury

But life surprises you. Life tells you to close your eyes and blow out the candles, and sometimes life smashes your face into the cake before you can even make a wish.
— Chapter 7

Our bodies block the beam from the lighthouse as we wave our arms and, even though we can’t see it, we’re casting shadows onto the sky so that even the constellations will know: we are seventeen and shattered and still dancing. We have messy, throbbing hearts, and we are stronger than anyone could ever know.
— Chapter 13

The main character of this book will drive you mad, you will find her annoying and dislike her at times. And you will fall utterly in love with the other main character and want one like him for yourself. And you would be correct with all those feelings and so very wrong about some of them at the same time. It is all there, the hints are clear in the text, but it will take until almost the end of the book for the science to make sense of some of what’s happening. And other things can’t be explained anyway.
This book gave me a very special appreciation that not all happy endings need to be a happily ever after. Or actually happy. The story celebrates the joy of the moment and that some moments, even if they are finite, are wonderful. And this is not taken away from them once they are over. In danger of sounding like a Hallmark card, or rather like Faulkner, really: Don’t cry because it’s over, but smile because it happened.
I realise that I’m not saying anything about the plot itself, and I don’t think I have to. Not much apart from: It’s a summer love story about two people meeting, falling in love, and finding themselves in the process of healing (on their own and each other). Simple as that and yet so very precious and complex in it’s language and storytelling.
If the criticism is that there are aspects of this book that aren’t perfect or pretty ... well reality isn’t that way either and no two people handle things the same. And while there are actions portrayed in this book that shoudln’t be emulated there is, in my opinion, nothing in the story that condones those actions, but rather on the contrary shows the consequences. And I’m very confident that readers are mature and intelligent enough that if they appreciate the book they can form their own opinion on those actions and make informed choices accordingly.

Do you have a book with an unhappy happy ending that made you feel sad but still appreciate it for its very existence? Share experiences and your teasers in the comments.