Taylor Jenkins Reid’s debut novel, Forever, Interrupted, is a romance and women’s fiction novel. Originally published by Atria in 2013, Forever, Interrupted launched Reid’s writing career. She has gone on to publish three more romance novels and four works of historical fiction, including the bestsellers Daisy Jones and the Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Forever, Interrupted is set in Los Angeles, California, and is written from the first-person point of view of Elsie Porter, a 26-year-old librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library as she navigates The Process of Finding and Building New Relationships, The Intensity of Brief and Sudden Romance, and The Journey from Heartbreak to Healing.

This guide refers to the 2013 First Washington Square Press/Atria paperback edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The novel deals with sudden death and grief.

Plot Summary

The novel opens in the narrative present but alternates between the past and present throughout the novel. For the sake of clarity, the following summary presents a linear representation of the protagonist Elsie Porter’s first-person account.

On New Year’s Day, 26-year-old Elsie walks to Georgie’s Pizza to pick up her order. While waiting, she meets a handsome man named Ben Ross, and the two form an immediate connection. Elsie agrees to give him her number and goes home feeling giddy and excited about the possibility of seeing him again. The next day, she and Ben go on their first date. Ben takes her to a Mexican restaurant an hour outside of where they live in Los Angeles, California. They chat about their lives and pasts on the way there, over lunch, and on the way back. Afterward, Ben drives Elsie to her favorite gelato shop, and the couple returns to Elsie’s, where they spend the rest of the evening talking, kissing, and laughing together.

Elsie tells her best friend, Ana Romano, about her feelings for Ben. She and Ana agree that Ben might be her soulmate. Over the next few days, Elsie and Ben continue to see one another. They agree that their relationship is moving quickly, but neither of them minds. Over dinner one evening, they decide that they’ll sleep together that night, and will break up if their feelings for each other dwindle or change at the end of five weeks. On the last day before the five weeks are up, Elsie and Ben confess that they are in love with each other. Not long later, Elsie invites Ben to move in with her.

Meanwhile, Elsie retreats from her other relationships and invests all of her energy in Ben. Ben does the same thing and even hides the truth of his relationship with Elsie from his mother, Susan Ross. He tells Elsie that he’s hesitant to tell her because his mom is still grieving his dad, who died three years earlier. Then one night, the couple impulsively decides to drive to Las Vegas and elope. On the way, Ben wonders if they should wait until he tells Susan, but Elsie argues that if he really loves her, he’ll marry her now. They ultimately go through with the wedding.

Nine days later, Ben dies in an accident on his bike ride home from the pharmacy. Elsie hears the sirens and races into the street, horrified to see Ben’s mangled bike under the moving truck that hit him. The reporting police officer drives her to the hospital, where she encounters Susan for the first time. Susan refuses to believe that Elsie is who she says she is because she has never heard of her before, and Elsie doesn’t have her marriage certificate to prove the veracity of her relationship with Ben.

Ana stays with Elsie in the days leading up to Ben’s funeral. Elsie spends most of her time lying in her room, crying. After the funeral, she pretends that she’s doing better, but she still struggles to engage with her friends, coworkers, and patrons at the public library where she works.

One day, Susan appears at her house to apologize. She is sorry she treated Elsie so poorly after Ben died and asks Elsie if she wants to be friends. The women start spending time together in the following weeks. Susan eventually comes over and helps Elsie pack up Ben’s things, which she hasn’t moved since his death. At first, the project feels helpful to Elsie. However, she still feels edgy and angry and ends up punching a man at the library when he asks for her number. Susan comes to the rescue, and she encourages Elsie to take a leave of absence and come stay with her at her home in Newport Beach for a few weeks.

Elsie accepts the invitation, and she feels better the longer she is with Susan. The women watch movies, swim in the pool, make food, and read books. At the end of the stay, they visit the cemetery and talk to Ben together.

Susan gives Elsie a check from Ben’s bank account. Elsie cashes it and uses the money to buy hundreds of young adult novels, which she donates to the public library, naming the section after Ben and his family. She starts to feel better about herself in the meantime. She maintains her connection with Susan, repairs her relationship with Ana, and develops a kinship with one of her favorite patrons, George Callahan. While taking George out for a beer one night, Elsie reflects on her recent experiences and wonders what will happen to her in the coming year.