3.5 stars The book "Swear on This Life" leaves me feeling conflicted. The book takes place in two time levels, one in the present, where Emeline comes to a book that deals with her own traumatic childhood, which makes her quickly realize that her childhood friend Jase, whom she hasn't seen since 10 years, wrote it. On the other hand, in the past of Jase and Emiline, which is presented as the book written by Jase. I find the idea of a book in a book very good and I enjoyed this while reading. But now about why I am conflicted: I really liked the passages where it is about the childhood of Emiline and Jase. I found the two characters there totally authentic and symphatic. I sympathized with Em and Jase, because they had such a hard start in life and grew up in really bad situations. But it was also wonderful to read how the two have become friends and through their deep friendship, which over time became love, the problems were a little easier to deal with. All the things that I liked in the past were not there for me in the present. The characters around Emiline and Jase had for me no depth and have partly acted totally without understanding. What I also have to mention: There definitely would have been room for a better friend than Cara was in the story for Emiline. I found her totally irrelevant and in some places also zero sensitive considering that she just learned what Emiline had been through in her childhood, which she clearly hadn't come to terms with yet. All in all, I think that there is a lot of potential behind the story, which was partly used, but partly (especially in the present part) not.