Valentina was just a girl entering her teens when her mother disappeared — to London, her dad said. The years passed and nothing was heard from her. Now, as Val reels from the death of her marriage, she receives word of another death: her mom, who has left her a bookstore in Primrose Hill. Although Valentina knew her mother was originally from England, she’s never had any real interest in going, but now she has nothing keeping her from making the trip and finding answers. Why did her mother leave her, and who was she, really? Such is the story of From London with Love, which is told in two parts: we follow Valentina as she makes her move to London and begins engaging with her mother’s friends and neighbors in Primrose Hill, trying to understand who her mother was and how she could have meant so much to the people around her when she’d abandoned her husband and daughter years before. Val will make her own connections to those people, and to her mother through a series of scavenger hunts that introduce her to the people and places of Primrose Hill — but, in alternating chapters the reader also follows Val’s mom Eloise from her own youth forward to her death. We get to know her in full far before Val does, leading to a wonderful sense of anticipation as Val gets closer and closer to the truth of who her mother was. It’s as if we’re standing across a street, watching two dear friends approach the same place from perpendicular roads, destined to bump into one another as they round the corner.  This also means we get to witness other sides of Val’s new friends’ lives through the eyes of someone who knew them longer and more deeply. With Love is also (as the name would hint) a love story, or rather multiple love stories: Eloise falls in love but ultimately chooses to marry someone else, wrangling with those consequences, and Valentina is intrigued by handwritten comments in a copy of her favorite book, going on a little hunt to see if she can track the person down. I thought there was some fairly obvious telegraphing of who she would wind up with, despite the red herrings, but Jio teased just enough to keep me on my toes. I didn’t realize halfway in that I was reading a romance novel of all things, but the mother-daughter relationship is front and center, and that combined with the whole “librarian inherits a bookstore, finds community” angle worked to make this a wonderfully sweet story, even for someone whose fiction reading generally involves shooting, stabbing, or science fiction.

His voice trailed off as he turned his attention to the night sky. “Look at the stars up there, fighting to be seen through all these city lights. It’s like a battle between two opposing forces: eternity versus modernity.” I smiled up at him curiously. “Eternity for the win?” “Eternity always wins,” he continued. “And that is the greatest comfort, isn’t it?”

“The fact of the matter is bad things happen to good people. They do. All the time. But it’s our choice whether we wallow in them for the rest of our lives, or whether we accept the invitation.” I furrow my brow, confused. “The invitation?” “Yes, to begin life’s grand second act. You see, that’s what your mother learned. Once she stopped looking back, she could finally move forward.”