Breakaway Books

Authored by Aisha Muharrar; Published August 2025; Fiction

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Loved One is a specific type of meditation on grief, capturing the confusion and messiness of mourning a person who was taken right in the midst of their life, like a sentence without a conclusion. It feels real rather than melodramatic, balancing sadness with oddness and levity.

Loved One follows Julia, a jewelry creator, as she recovers from the accidental death of her first love and long-time friend Gabe, a rising star in the music world with whom she had just reconnected romantically. After attending his funeral, Julia commits to finding objects of his that have been lost to bring them back to his mother, which brings her to London and his most recent ex-girlfriend Elizabeth. The two discover that while they don’t exactly trust each other—their interactions are tinged with jealousy from the start—they have a lot to learn from each other.

One might think that this is a book about Gabe, or perhaps about the relationship between Gabe and Julia, but the emotional core of this book is the burgeoning relationship between Julia and Elizabeth. When they first meet, they circle each other cautiously, carefully doling out what they know about Gabe, hiding secrets and ignoring their obvious similarities. But over the course of the novel, they shed layer after layer of insecurity and jealousy until they can finally sit together and grieve. Elizabeth coaxes Julia into admitting, to herself more than anyone else, just how much she cared about Gabe and how great the loss of the possibility of what could have been between them is for her. While I’m not sure that Elizabeth (or anyone) has the right to tell Julia how to grieve, it seems like a kindness that helps Julia to grow, and it speaks to the courage and strength it takes to face the full force of grief head on.

The novel brilliantly depicts the confusion that results when a young person dies suddenly—there are so many loose ends that can never be tied up. It gives the book a strange unsettled feeling, but a purposeful one: We will never know precisely what Gabe was thinking when he stopped talking to Julia for a month and suddenly begged her to see him the night of his death. There are unanswered questions that Julia (and Elizabeth and his mother) have to deal with in addition to the waves of sadness. Even the phobia that Julia has to conquer about getting in the shower (the scene of Gabe’s accidental death) is a part of dealing with this sudden tragedy. It’s addressing these lesser known parts of mourning that sets the novel apart and makes it feel like it could actually happen.

Loved One is a lifelike depiction of both the weirdness and depression that come with mourning a life cut short. It’s not an ideal beach read, but it will invite you to think more deeply about what you will leave behind.