Synopsis: When Leeds meets Layla, he’s convinced he’ll spend the rest of his life with her—until an unexpected attack leaves Layla fighting for her life. After weeks in the hospital, Layla recovers physically, but the emotional and mental scarring has altered the woman Leeds fell in love with. In order to put their relationship back on track, Leeds whisks Layla away to the bed-and-breakfast where they first met. Once they arrive, Layla’s behavior takes a bizarre turn. And that’s just one of many inexplicable occurrences.
Feeling distant from Layla, Leeds soon finds solace in Willow—another guest of the B&B with whom he forms a connection through their shared concerns. As his curiosity for Willow grows, his decision to help her find answers puts him in direct conflict with Layla’s well-being. Leeds soon realizes he has to choose because he can’t help both of them. But if he makes the wrong choice, it could be detrimental for all of them.
There could be realms of existence we’ve never even entertained the idea of. They could be endless. I don’t think we ever die.
Colleen Hover’s novel Layla begins with the main character Leeds Gabriel seeking assistance from a doctor while his sweetheart, Layla, is bound to a bed in a guest room upstairs.
When the doctor asks Leeds how he met Layla, Leeds reminisces about their first encounter together. He recalls noticing Layla on the dance floor at her sister Aspen’s wedding. Leeds, a backup base player in his friend Garrett’s amateur band talks about the evening he became intrigued by Layla’s erratic dance moves.
He revisits their romantic interlude and remembers releasing the sadness he held onto after he lost his father. Surprisingly, Leeds is enjoying himself. Buoyed by Layla’s free-spirited personality Leeds is anxious to meet her. As the final musical number comes to an end, Leeds can not hide his emotions when he sees Layla cheering and clapping for an encore performance.
Chad, the groom, invites Leeds and his band members to join the wedding party as they exit the stage. Leeds finds Layla in the pool and decides to join her. Enamored by one another the couple spends the night together at the bride and groom’s bed and breakfast venue Corazon del Paisa-the heart of the country.
Instead of joining their friends and family, Leeds convinces Layla to stay additional days with him at Corazon del Paisa. From there they travel together to Leed’s home. In Nashville, they settle into a comfortable routine together falling madly in love.
Layla creates an Instagram account for Leeds as a platform to share his music. She believes Leeds is talented enough to make it on his own. Layla feels that Garrett’s bandmates stifle Leeds’s musical capabilities.
One evening Leeds posts a photo sitting with Layla on his bed to his Instagram account. Leeds’s female followers don’t respond well to the photo of his girlfriend.
Leeds receives comments like
Your girlfriend looks like a slut and You’re hotter when you’re single.
A young woman from Leed’s past appears to be extremely disturbed by his post.
The Instagram post changes the couple’s lives irrevocably after an unspeakable act occurs. Leeds and Layla are no longer the same. Their relationship is at the breaking point, so Leeds plans a secret getaway for Layla at the bed and breakfast where they originally met.
Corazon del Paisa is no longer warm and welcoming upon their arrival. The bed and breakfast is dark, dusty, vacant, and for sale on the real estate market.
As Layla heads upstairs to the bathroom unexpectedly, the vanity mirror cracks and splatters all over. Leeds leaves his dinner preparation unattended and races up the steps to reach Layla. When Leeds finds Layla she is dumbfounded. Layla can’t explain the broken glass to Leeds.
Meanwhile, Leeds encounters smoke billowing up the steps from his sauce on the kitchen stove. He hurries back down to the kitchen only to discover that the burner’s off and running water is dripping from the sink. Leeds doesn’t know what to make of this turn of events.
After Layla retires to bed, Leeds phones his mother in Seattle. During their conversation, Leeds asks his mother if she believes in ghosts? They talk for a while, but Leeds hangs up feeling agitated.
Leeds opens his laptop and starts searching for paranormal occurrences. He enters a chat room creates a pseudonym and raises a question about ghosts. An expert in the chat room encourages Leeds to communicate with the ghost.
The spirit responds to Leeds’s request by plunking notes on the piano and shuffling books around. Willow’s spirit eventually uses Layla’s body as a vessel. Embodying Layla, Willow eats, drinks, and forms a relationship with Leeds.
Perhaps what we desire can sometimes be so strong it overpowers our fate.
Sadly, Leeds now favors Willow’s company over Laylas. Leeds is torn between his love for Willow and Layla. He has many unanswered questions and cannot begin to know how to proceed. Who is Willow and how did she end up at Corazon Del Paisa? What was Willow like when she was alive? Why is Layla unrecognizable to Leeds? How did his love for Layla falter? Can Leeds remedy his precarious situation with Willow and Layla? Will Leeds find his way back to the former love of his life, Layla, or choose to spend his life with Willow?
Throughout the final chapters of Layla, author Colleen Hoover overreaches, and her narrative touches on the suspension of disbelief. Her subsequent pages are somewhat of a hodge-podge of inexplicable circumstances. Hoover’s chapters are not easy to follow, and her premise collapses. She plunges too far into the abyss filling her paragraphs with ghosts, spirits, and otherworldly accounts.
