‘The Days I Loved You Most’ by Amy Neff had its launch in Europe in mid-July, and will be available in the U.S. on July 30, 2024.

By Ronni Newton

Amy Neff has written an epic love story, a tale she has embraced so fully that she has spent 10 years – nearly a third of her life –crafting it from beginning to end.

And “beginning to end” does not just mean from the day she typed the first words of the novel, but also is the nature of the story, which evolves over the characters’ lifetimes.

“The seed of it is that I really wanted to write a love story, to tell the story from the beginning to the end. What does it look like to build a life over decades,” Neff, a West Hartford resident, said in an interview at Hartford Baking Company – one of the places where she said she occasionally grabbed some undistracted time to write and edit.

“The Days I Loved You Most” has not yet had its official release, but it’s already receiving great critical acclaim, including from No. 1 New York Times Best-selling author Jodi Picoult, who wrote one of the blurbs praising the book. “I’ve never read a story quite like this deeply moving, complex novel – the truths we owe ourselves and others; the difference between self and selfishness; the parts of love that make us want to leave … and the parts that make us desperate to stay,” wrote Picoult.

“She is a genre of her own,” Neff said of Picoult. She grew up reading her novels, and to have received her praise is just “unreal.” She said she cried and it was an “out of body experience” to have Picoult to not only read what she had written but to call her work original.

Praise has come from other authors and booksellers as well.

Her novel, Neff said, is about family, and a “celebration of the beauty of life.”

Evelyn was literally the girl next door when she and Joseph fell in love in 1941, growing up in a town along the Connecticut shore that mirrors a beach town where Neff’s own family has spent summers for six generations. But this is not your standard romance story where a couple has a courtship and comes together and lives happily – or even not so happily – ever after.

“I knew it would have to end,” she said, as all lives eventually do, but in this case the end is prompted by Evelyn’s diagnosis of a serious illness. This is not a spoiler because in the first chapter, she and Joseph sit down with their three adult children and tell them that they want their story to end on their own terms – in a year – and they plan to die together.

Neff then steps back, and takes the reader through various stages of their relationship – from before they even realized they were in love, to difficult years during World War II and at other periods of their lives, as each looks to realize their lifelong dreams, and through the struggles of parenting, of illnesses and addiction. Joseph and Evelyn are the main voices, but some of the chapters are from the perspective from each of the children as well.

The novel is not intended to be depressing – although having a box of tissues nearby while reading it is a good idea – but rather is heartfelt, heartwarming, and – because the reader knows that the love story will end – it’s also heartbreaking. At the same time, Neff said, it’s also life-affirming.

She was inspired by great examples of love in her life, particularly her grandparents who had a beautiful relationship that began when they were just 15 and 17. Her grandmother ultimately outlived her grandfather by 10 years, and had so many more wonderful experiences, like the birth of great-grandchildren, “but didn’t get to share those moments with the one she loved.”

Neff said she was driven to explore the concept of “other options,” of taking control of the ending of life. But the book, she said, is not about aid in dying. “It was always a love story.”

During her publishing journey, Neff said she has heard stories of couples who have faced similar decisions – and stories from those who wished they had an option. The characters and the story are complete fiction, she said, but the concept is true to life and not always told through a fictional lens of rose-colored glasses. It’s about what could be the reality for a couple that “continues to choose each other and focus on the love.”

The process

“I started with the title,” Neff said, which is not the approach most authors take.

It was 2013. “I was 22. I spent the day in Central Park by myself – me and a notebook. I mapped out the title and the central premise,” she said, and over the next 10 years neither of those key elements changed.

For the next five years, the book was on the “back burner of my life,” said Neff. When she started “The Days I Loved You Most” she had been dating her now-husband for about six months and was living in Atlanta, working for Teach for America, but decided she didn’t want a career as a teacher. She had other jobs, including in property management and sales, but “they were always paycheck jobs,” she said. “I wanted to write.”

She got married and moved back to her home state of Connecticut. Ultimately, she said, “Something just shifted,” and she decided to go “all in” on writing her novel. She had received some bites but no offers and hired a developmental editor.

“I did a nine-month revision, which timed out pretty perfectly with my pregnancy with my [first] son,” she said. When she had a false alarm at 35 weeks she panicked not just because the baby might come early, but because she had one more chapter left to complete. “He came two days after I finished that revision.”

Neff said she received more than 100 rejections during the period of time between the fall of 2019 and 2022. Once the pandemic began, some publishers said the timing for this type of story just wasn’t right.

“It was 10 drafts to the final draft,” Neff said. “I am truly thankful in hindsight, and so glad I had the time I did. I had the luxury of time with these characters,” she said, to deepen their personalities. It was during the latter stages that she added chapters from the perspective of Evelyn and Joseph’s children as well.

By then, she “knew” those three children very well. “When I set out to write those chapters, they poured out of me.”

Some of the revelations in the story came at different times in the completed version than in earlier drafts.

“Not only is the book stronger, but I’m stronger. I feel very secure in the work that I’ve done,” Neff said, adding that the story matured with her. “I always believed in the story but didn’t know what I needed to get to the next level.”

She did extensive research – about gardening, about death, illness, and the end of life. She read accounts of hospice nurses, Michael J. Fox’s memoir about living with Parkinson’s Disease. She even double-checked what seem like small details – like whether or not there were cupcake liners in the 1960s.

To ensure the highest degree of authenticity, Neff got a backstage tour of the Boston Symphony and met with the owner of a bed and breakfast in Westbrook.

It’s a multi-generational saga that spans the 1940s to the early 2000s. Most readers, she said, feel that the ending of the novel is satisfactory.

Background

“I was always a reader, always a writer,” said Neff, who was an English major at Northeastern University but didn’t think writing fiction could be a viable career. “It was a long road to get there.”

Her familiarity with Boston figures prominently in “The Days I Loved You Most, as does, of course, her love for the Connecticut shore where the story is primarily set. On some level, she said, the book is also “a love letter to a place, as much as a love letter itself.”

It was in Atlanta where Neff met her husband, who grew up in Ohio and Florida, and works in commercial real estate. She said he knew early on that returning to Connecticut, to be near the shoreline, was part of their future.

Growing up she also enjoyed poetry and short stories. She graduated high school from the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, which she said was a very “safe space” for young writers to learn to accept critique. “It was so instrumental to my early understanding of the craft of writing,” she said.

In recent years Neff has become part of and received support from a four-person writing group of authors who live throughout the country. Amazingly, she said, “We are all now debuting within a year of each other.”

Next steps

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Neff when asked if she is planning to continue writing, if she is working on her next novel.

She’s not writing at the moment because she is so focused on the launch, but definitely has some ideas in the works that should not take another 10 years to bring to fruition. She also has representation for film rights for “The Days I Loved You Most,” but said that’s a completely separate process and could take years.

Neff has now been married for nearly a decade and has two young sons, ages 3 and 5. She has found time to write at the breakfast nook in her home in the morning, during nap time, late at night. Occasionally, as a rare treat, she’s found some uninterrupted time to write or edit in a coffee shop like Hartford Baking Company.

“Did I ever want to give up?” Neff said. While there were certainly times of frustration, she kept going. During her second month postpartum she participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and took that as a break to work on another book. She has some drafts, and in the fall will focus on her next project.

On Monday, July 29, the day before the nationwide July 30 launch of “The Days I Loved You Most,” Neff will be collaborating with River Bend Books (West Hartford and Glastonbury) for a launch party at Thomas Hooker Live in Hartford (1 Sequassen Street) from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Advance registration is required (click here) and books will be available at the event. Pre-signed copies can also be ordered from River Bend.

Neff, who returned from her book launch in Munich the night before this interview, said she is overcome by the reception the book has received. She’s been living with her book for so long that reaching this phase always would have been exciting, but the fact that it is not only being published in the United States but also throughout the world and has been translated into 20 languages, she said, “It’s mind-blowing. It’s such a dream.”

“The Days I Loved You Most” is being published in the United States and Canada by Park Row, and by Bloomsbury in the UK, as well as by a variety of publishers in other countries. In Germany, the translated version “Warte auf Mich am Meer” is the “lead title for this year” for publisher Goldmann. Neff said it was their biggest launch ever, with campaigns in 13 cities and blurbs in every possible lifestyle or women’s magazine.

Neff recently learned that her book was picked as a Book of The Month Club “add on” pick this month.

After the July 29 event in Hartford, she’s off on a tour that includes stops in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island – before heading off to London for a launch there.

Information about her upcoming events, and other details about Neff and “The Days I Loved You Most,” can be found on her website, AmyNeff.com. She’s also on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and X (@amyneffauthor).

While a love story, “The Days I Loved You Most” is not classified as romance but rather as general fiction or “book club fiction.” It resonates with men as well as women, she said.

Her husband has been her greatest supporter but didn’t read it all the way through until the novel was finalized. “He cried. He was really moved when he read the dedication, and we both cried.”

Since publication has become reality, the past year, she said, has been a magical experience. “It has felt like a dream.”

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