Book Review: Start at the End

Part 8 of my Top Ten Romance Books to Read this Summer!

Start at the End by Emma Grey follows Audrey and Fraser’s love story. Themes of found family and finding your voice as an artist are developed. With Audrey’s character development, the novel delves into her love for composing music, the intensity of artistic relationships, and finding inspiration and your voice after disappointment. Thematically, the novel examines how the creative voices of women have been suppressed and how often men have taken credit for women’s creative works over time. As a writer and someone who studies the creative process, Audrey’s storyline felt really powerful for me and gave me a lot to think about.

With that said, Start at the End also has clever banter, flirting, romance, and steamy moments. The book moves along swiftly, and while it is a romance, it also has the women’s fiction elements of grief, nuanced character development, and a sad yet hopeful love story. These are hallmarks of Grey’s work I have appreciated in her other adult fiction novels.

I won’t tell you too much more about Start at the End plot-wise. Just know that the novel is romantic, sad, happy, joyful, and melancholy all at once. The book also includes use of parallel timelines (sliding doors), so it is structurally unique and interesting, but was not confusing for me. Audrey and Fraser’s paths diverge after a traumatic event, and then the book follows those two timelines and the ramifications for characters.

I will also say that if you liked the intense artistic connection/relationship from Into the Blue by Emma Brodie, you will get some of that feeling by reading Start at the End.

Did you love Start at the End. Read Pictures of You next!