Title: Just Say You Won’t Let Go Vol. 1
Author: Peter Rodriguez
Publisher: Novel Horizons
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 184
Genre: Slice-of-Life, Romance
Publication Date: August 1, 2021
The Story
Just Say You Won’t Let Go centers around a girl named Emina who wants to make friends; however, she has a tough time doing so. One day at the park, she tries to swing on the swings but cannot get any momentum. A young boy helps her out and then runs off to play with his friends. Infatuated by the boy, Emina tries to impress him by traversing the monkey bars but gets stuck halfway through. The boy, again, helps her out, saying that he won’t let go. As the boy’s mother takes him away, he shouts that his name is Haruto.
From here, there is a time skip and Emina is now in high school where she, one day, bumps into Haruto in the hallway by coincidence; however, she can’t bring herself to talk to him. She’s not even sure if it’s the same person from her childhood. What begins is an innocent tale between two young kids who fell in love at first sight and look to confirm and rekindle those initial feelings… with a few roadblocks in the way!
Characters
The cast for this series is really small but small casts often work best and that’s exactly what happens here.
Emina comes from a wealthy family… one of which demands the highest level of composure, respect, and formality when speaking and out in public. Her family paid her way into the best schools so that she could become well prepared to enter her family’s business. This was the reason why she became such a bookworm. Coupled with the fact that she was very shy and not very social, it became the perfect marriage for her.
Her chance meeting with Haruto; however, begins to change all of that. Slowly, you begin to see her rebuild her confidence. She begins to dress differently, wear her hair differently, even muster up the courage that was not there before. Of course, every path is not laid with gold and there are bumps along the way that cause Emina to doubt her own actions and take those proverbial steps backward. That’s only natural when you’re trying to break out of your shell and it was portrayed nicely here through her character.
Haruto, on the other hand, had a very hard life growing up. An alcoholic father and a mother claimed by cancer didn’t make things easy for him. Still, those experiences made him very humble. He always cherished what he was given in life and he lived by the mottos that his mother left behind for him: Live and Love and Don’t Ever Let Go. Those mottos became the foundation of his character and you could see them shine through with every one of his actions.
From the words he carefully chose when speaking, his forward attitude, the way he recognized his boundaries, his consideration for Emina, all of it. A kind, gentle soul would be the perfect description for Haruto and it is obvious that he cares very deeply for her. In fact, they share a common thread that they have been on each other’s minds ever since that fateful meeting on the playground when they were younger. If there were ever two characters ever bound by fate, it would be these two and that, honestly, created a bit of a fault that I’ll get to a bit later.
Rumi is our red-haired girl who is the jealous, scheming type. She was one of the ones who ended up teasing Emina after class one day for being a bookworm her whole life. Rumi has a crush on Haruto as well which adds a bit of drama to the mix. Every love story cannot be perfect… there has to be some monkey wrench thrown in there at some point and Rumi is that wrench. While she doesn’t have a prominent presence throughout the beginning of the volume, she does have one towards the end and makes it count. She’s a great character to love to hate!
Toru, the blond-haired boy, is also a close friend of Haruto’s and part of the group that ends up teasing and resenting Emina. Toru, on the other hand, isn’t as devious as Rumi. He’s direct in his words and certainly isn’t afraid to give a verbal lashing but he’s much more passive when it comes to dealing with things. This is evident when Haruto stood up for Emina during graduation and later on during Rumi’s so-called grand scheme. There were a couple of moments where you felt that he MIGHT have a bit of redemption but based on certain events, there’s another direction this character is taking which looks to be more prominent in Volume 2.
Final Thoughts
One of the things that bothers me a lot with romance stories is that authors are very afraid to pull the trigger. Even when things are set up perfectly for two people to get together, we are given that non-committal ending which feels like a huge deflation to this symbolic balloon that had been filling up more and more throughout the course of the story. Even some recently animated works have followed this path which has irked and angered me.
Thankfully, Peter Rodriguez is not one of those storytellers and knows to pull the trigger and give his readers that moment of confirmation… that moment of happiness after investing time into the story, awaiting for that payoff. It was a huge sigh of relief when that moment came; however, the manner in which it came was a bit unexpected. I don’t want to get into it because I want to avoid as many spoilers as possible but I will say that it was a different twist. Some may say that he jumped the gun but with the way the story was told, I, personally, believe it was justified and while a bit jarring, it made perfect sense to go in that direction. It was a bold step and a risk, for sure, but one that I believe paid off!
As to what I said about Haruto as a character… I felt that he was a bit TOO good. While some may not find fault with that, it ended up giving me the impression that the relationship development seemed too perfect… too convenient. I was practically begging for some drama to happen because of it and then…. It did and I, again, breathed a sigh of relief, but herein lies the problem. Because of the way Haruto was built as a character, it almost made the drama irrelevant.
Because of Haruto’s concrete feelings for Emina, it would have taken an act of God to ruin that relationship and if Haruto had gone any other direction as the result of that drama, it would have made zero sense. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it made the outcome a bit too predictable which, honestly, is not really a negative because there are some people who just want a good, straight-faced love story that doesn’t mess around and that’s what you’ll get here with Just Say You Won’t Let Go. On the other hand, some love stories need a bit of spiciness to them… they need a bit more of a hook to keep readers guessing along the way, to give some sort of mystery to it.
“Will he really end up with Emina? What if Rumi succeeds? What if she schemed harder and really swayed his heart!?”
I never asked those questions because it was too in-your-face that Haruto and Emina would end up together. That’s why Rumi’s scheme, while it added much-needed drama, felt empty and pointless. It did a good job of developing her character a bit more AND gave readers a satisfying conclusion to her small arc that even made me recite a line out loud that Haruto said before he even said it but if there was one fault of this book, this would be it.
Everything else was all I could ask for from a romance novel. Great characters… especially one with social anxiety that saw her slowly come out of her shell… and a relationship that actually has confirmation!
Excellent story all around and the cliffhanger at the end of the book is making me want Volume 2 yesterday! I highly recommend that you pick this one up!
Final Verdict: 4.5/5
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This item was purchased for review.
