Laws of Love and Logic
A Novel
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4.0 • 46 Ratings
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
A STUNNING DEBUT NOVEL FROM JENNA BUSH HAGER’S NEW VENTURE, THOUSAND VOICES
An extraordinary debut novel about two sisters, one impossible choice, and the long shadow of the past
“A magnificent, spellbinding love story.”—Clare Leslie Hall, New York Times bestselling author of Broken Country
Lily Webb has spent years trying to build a steady, predictable life, far from the hometown marred by tragedy and the sister she cannot seem to save from herself.
Jane has always been the brilliant sister: fierce, complicated, and drawn to the mysteries of the universe. But after their mother’s death, Jane’s gifts became entangled with addiction, pulling the sisters into a cycle of love, guilt, and heartbreak that neither can escape.
Lily has found comfort in a quiet marriage to a devoted scientist, one who opened her eyes to the beauty of the natural world and offered her safety and stability. But when her first love, a boy she lost under devastating circumstances, returns, Lily is forced to confront the past she thought she had buried.
As old wounds reopen, and her fragile bond with Jane grows ever more tenuous, Lily must navigate the tension between the life she’s built and the life she once imagined,
Spanning decades and rich with questions of faith, science, and the ties that hold us together, Laws of Love and Logic is a compelling, emotionally gripping novel about sisterhood, forgiveness, and the complicated nature of love.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A woman tries to heal her divided heart in this intensely poignant read. When teenage Lily Webb fell in love, she thought it would last forever. More than a boyfriend, he was her best friend, until an act of violence tore them apart. Now, years later, Lily has found love with a different kind of man, a renowned ornithologist who loves her as much as he does birds. But her feelings for “the boy” won’t dissipate—especially when he reappears in her life. Debra Curtis skillfully weaves philosophy, spirituality, and nature into her intimate debut. Punctuated with facts about the strangely captivating world of birds, the novel seems to unfold from within Lily’s heart as she struggles to contain the conflicting passions spilling out of it. We especially loved her tender, anchoring bond with her sister, Jane, whom she tries vainly to protect from herself. Laws of Love and Logic is a gorgeously complicated journey full of secrets, yearning, and haunted memories.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Curtis's affecting debut finds a married woman trying to hold onto the love of two men. It begins with Lily Webb's painful adolescence in 1970s Rhode Island, when she loses her mother to breast cancer at 13. In high school, she dates a promising football player known only as "the boy." During the summer before college, the boy finds Lily drunk at a beach party, where their classmate David McCarren, whom the boy had previously punched for groping Lilly, claims he's just had sex with her. Believing David raped Lily, the boy attacks him, leaving him disabled, and is sentenced to three years in prison for aggravated assault. Lily moves on and, years later, falls for her former university professor Marshall Middleton ("His love had an undeniable pull, and maybe even the capacity to extract her from her past"). They marry, but while she's reeling from the news that Marshall is infertile, she attends her high school reunion and reconnects with her old beau, whom she still calls the boy, now out of prison and living in a sailboat in her hometown, and they have sex. Curtis sustains tension as Lily is tormented by guilt over deceiving Marshall, and she skillfully conveys the power of Lily's lifetime bond with the boy. This one is book club catnip.
