The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Reid, Taylor Jenkins. One True Loves. Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2016.

Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel One True Loves is predominantly written from the main character Emma Blair's first person point of view. The novel employs both the past and present tenses, and toys with conventional notions of linear time. These structural distortions are in service of the narrative, and enact Emma's complex emotional experiences throughout the novel. The following guide adheres to a linear mode of explanation, and relies upon the present tense.

Emma Blair grows up with her family in Acton, Massachusetts. She lives with her parents, Colin and Ashley, and her older sister, Marie. Marie is the perfect child. She is a good student. She is popular. She has artistic interests. She is even excited about investing in the family business, a local bookstore called Blair Books. Desperate to be different from her sister, Emma does everything in her power to hate everything Marie likes.

When Emma begins to develop a friendship with one of her classmates and her parents' employees, a boy named Sam Kemper, Emma's outlook changes. She previously ignored Sam simply because Marie thought he was cute. She realizes it is time to be who she wants to be.

Throughout high school, Emma harbors a crush on a swimmer named Jesse Lerner. In her sophomore year, she finally gets to meet and talk to Jesse at a classmate's house party. Just as they are striking up a conversation, the cops arrive. Emma and Jesse hide in the bushes, but are ultimately caught and brought to the station. The experience grants them a point of connection. They reveal their mutual feelings for one another. They discover that they are both desperate to leave Acton and travel the world. They fall in love over the following months.

After high school, Emma and Jesse move away to California where they start their new life of adventure together. Eventually, they marry. Emma believes that she is happy and that her future will be defined by Jesse. However, only a year after their wedding, Jesse disappears when his helicopter crashes over the North Pacific. At first, Emma refuses to believe he is dead. Once she finally reconciles herself with the fact that her husband is not returning, she moves back to Acton to be with her family.

Roughly three years later, Emma has finally rebuilt her life after losing Jesse. Then she runs into Sam at a music store, and the old friends rekindle their connection. They soon fall in love. Not long later, Sam proposes. Everything in Emma's life feels perfect. She is close with her family. She has taken over the family business. She is building a life with the man she loves. Two months later, however, Jesse calls Emma to say he is alive and coming home.

Over the course of the following days and weeks, Emma must make an impossible decision. She knows that she still loves Jesse. However, she also knows that she is indeed in love with Sam. Her sister eventually helps her understand that she is not, in fact, choosing between the two men. Rather, Emma must choose between the version of self she is in the context of each man. Ultimately, Emma realizes that she and Jesse have changed in irreconcilable ways. She decides to let him go and return to her life with Sam.