I Could Live Here Forever

December 1, 2022

Halperin's second novel (after Something Wild) is a girl-meets-boy love story weighed down by gritty authenticity. It's the kind of book that will make readers want to scream advice even while understanding the flawed choices the characters make. When lonely MFA student Leah encounters Charlie, the attraction is as instantaneous as it is intense. Leah is drawn to Charlie's good looks and gentle demeanor. While there are red flags waving, Leah strives to believe that the relationship is ordinary and stable, even after she discovers that her new boyfriend is, in his words, a recovering addict. No stranger to tragedy, Leah is armed with her own baggage, and her desire to take care of Charlie is entwined with a need for external validation. Halperin tells a story that is heavily character-driven. Little happens, but the novel is staggering in places. The characters are real and vulnerable, and Halperin is clearly at home in this genre. VERDICT Many readers will feel they can identify with this portrait of self-discovery, messy emotions, and challenging relationships. Fans of Halperin's first novel will also enjoy this offering.--Tara Kunesh

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 6, 2023
A doomed love affair frames this perceptive sophomore outing from Halperin (Something Wild). Leah Kempler, 25, moves from Boston to Madison, Wis., to pursue an MFA in fiction writing. After a year of writing short stories and doing some casual dating, she meets a guy named Charlie. To Leah, Charlie is “by far the most beautiful human being I have ever laid eyes on,” but after she gets to know him a bit, she senses something is amiss about the 31-year-old man who lives with his mom and stepdad in the suburbs. Charlie is sleepy all the time, can’t hold down a job, and can’t afford to drink in bars (he’s already got an MFA, and now works occasionally in construction). He tells her he’s recovering from heroin addiction, but soon it emerges, unsurprisingly, that Charlie is still using. As Leah begins sending her work out to literary journals and thinking about her future, she struggles to navigate a relationship she knows can’t last. Halperin makes the most of the overly familiar subject matter; the “buzzing electric hum” between the couple feels vital, as does the pull of exasperating and enchanting Charlie on Leah. By the end, even the most grizzled reader might turn into a hopeless romantic. Agent: Margaret Riley King, WME.

March 1, 2023
A writer falls in love with a musician, but their relationship isn't all beauty and light. When Leah Kempler, a fiction fellow in the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, meets Charlie Nelson, a musician, she's immediately smitten. He's beautiful, and their first-date conversation is easy and effortless. She soon finds out, though, that he still lives with his parents (who are kind and wonderful people, but still...) and that he isn't allowed to be in charge of his own money. Her friends are politely dismissive of him, and he seems uncomfortable sharing her with other people. He admits that he's a recovering heroin addict, but when his behavior becomes erratic and even stalkerlike--he sends long paranoid texts, shows up at Leah's door at all hours, or disappears for days at a time--Leah has to acknowledge that there's something wrong: He's started using again. And this is the cycle of tragedy that Charlie and his relationship with Leah and the book as a whole show us in stark detail: Drug addiction is an illness that's extremely difficult to cure. As Charlie himself says, "Imagine you're in pain...but you know that...all you have to do is press [a] button, and that pain will vanish....That button is heroin." The novel is about more than Charlie's struggles, of course. Leah's writing, and her friendships with her fellow fiction writers; her lingering pain at having been abandoned by her mother at a young age; her complicated relationships with her own father and brothers--these all get meaningful air time, and we come to understand that Leah is a talented, complex woman who understands intellectually that Charlie is not good for her but who loves him all the same even as she knows that she can't save him. Halperin humanizes the tragedy of drug addiction through Charlie, who is sweet and kind and loving and also irreparably damaged. Wistful, honest, and heartbreaking.

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April 1, 2023
Leah Kempler is in the Midwest for the first time, enrolled in the esteemed fiction-writing MFA program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and bumbling her way through the grad school social scene. Back in Boston, Leah was raised by her father and two older brothers after her mother took off when Leah was in middle school; that turmoil has informed every decision of her young adult life. Leah's inexperience in relationships is perhaps how she ends up with Charlie, a rail-thin musician living with his mother and stepfather in the suburbs. The attraction is visceral and mystical; there's just something about Charlie, who is vulnerable, sweet, and battling addiction to heroin. Everyone in Leah's life is judgmental and concerned--they want her to end things. Despite Leah's attempts to distance herself from him, Charlie is intoxicating. For the lonely dreamer, who spends her days and nights in fictional realms, Charlie is a natural fit. Halperin's (Something Wild, 2021) second novel is a rich, deep, star-crossed love story both heartbreaking and beautiful to read.

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