EVERY STORY IS A LOVE STORY, letting go of grieving

EVERY STORY IS A LOVE STORY
IMBOLO MBUE
Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers and How Beautiful We Were, a captivating novel about love lost—and the weight of regret

What if I’d never gotten into that car? What if I’d pulled out of the driveway five minutes earlier, or ten minutes later?

Three years ago, Wolo’s wife was killed in a tragic car accident. In an instant, the great love of his life was gone, and so was their beautiful future. In the face of a loss that seemed insurmountable, Wolo has slowly rebuilt a semblance of a life: he goes to work, hangs out with a small circle of friends, and fends off the matchmaking efforts of the older women in his family. The grief that dogged him has, with time, become a little gentler.

Until a letter arrives one day, unbidden, threatening to upend his life once again. It is from Victoria, the woman who was behind the wheel that terrible day. Wolo’s family pastor tells him the letter is the work of the devil; his mother expressly forbids him from making further mention of it; his father’s second wife calls, from Cameroon, to tell him to destroy it. But Wolo ponders it for days, and ultimately agrees to meet with the woman who killed his wife. When he does, the compassion and deep remorse of the woman affects him in ways he had never imagined, and he begins to wonder if the long road to healing can be shared.

What do we owe to those who have hurt us? Are we defined by our worst moments and our deepest regrets? And, more than anything, can forgiveness ease our suffering? Moving and full of life, Every Story Is a Love Story charts the uneven path from heartbreak to healing.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Wolo found true love with Yoma. It's the loveliest moment in someone's life: love is joyous before Life has its way with you, and Wolo? He was absolutely at the peak of joy because Yoma was pregnant!

Life had its way with him.

Victoria causes the accident that ends Wolo's happiness. It is impossible for Wolo to recover from this hideous, disfiguring agony of grief, and however loudly he tells his mother, his stepmother, his matchmaking aunties this he is still urged to date, to love again, to move on.

As if some random woman will be Yoma again, will be The One, will fill his life with laughter and excitement...impossible. And then. Will you look at that. Victoria writes to express her remorse for the awful thing she caused to happen to him. To ask Wolo to meet her and process their shared grief.

The Greek chorus of Wolo's life is unequivocal: Do not do this. Don't even think about doing this. You're morbidly obsessed with your loss already don't reinforce it is the universal subtext of their advice. Wolo's stunted, limited existence, the one he resists altering because letting go of his rage and agony feels like killing Yoma and their unborn twins again, has to change or Wolo will die. From the inside out.

So he says yes.

It was here I began to see why Author Mbue chose flashback, a style of storytelling I often find disinvolving, for Wolo's process of healing. It is reinjuring him, it is shoving his head in the waterboarding bucket again and again...it is allowing him just enough air to survive...it is letting him pull his feet under him on the wet floor and lurch and stumble away from the bucket...it is the light that shows the hand extended to him, showing a human is reaching with kind and helpful intent into his dark, drowning life.

It shows Wolo Victoria. Her pain from causing him pain. Her knowledge that she harmed Wolo, she (without malice) stole his life from him and wants so badly to do anything to help him because only that will help her.

And he reaches back.

Everything else I could say is spoilerific. I didn't give it a full-five rating because of spoilery stuff, but look how close I came. (Side note: I am so very happy to have as of October 2026 the ability to give quarter-star ratings on the country's biggest book-discovery engine.) It is Author Mbue's gift to be able to visit the darkest places in a person's life while they are floodlit in Capitalism's distracting material abundance and spiritual moonless midnight. This is another of her immigrants' tales of fitting in being less important than settling down.

It is a beautiful story with some odd edges to keep it from melting into the pleasant sameness of the bulk of entertaiment. That hard-to-differentiate mass gets so stultifyingly dull.