by Rainbow Rowell
First sentence: “The wedding invitation came, and Shiloh said yes, of course she’d be there.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There was swearing, including several f-bombs, as well as on-page sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

In high school, it was always Shiloh-and-Cary-and-Mike. They were always together, and everyone assumed that Shiloh and Cary were together. But they weren’t. They were just friends. And now, 14 years after they last saw each other, after Shiloh has been married and divorced and had two kids, Cary is back in her life. They re-met at Mike’s second marriage, back in Omaha – Shiloh never left, actually – and tried to pick up where they left off. There were some false starts and miscommunication, but in the end, and despite everything else going on in their lives, it was just too good – too right – to be back in each other’s orbit again.

On the one hand, I really enjoyed this. I connected with the characters — it’s set in 2006, when they were 33 (I was 34 that year) — and the situations they found themselves in. I liked Shiloh and Carey, even when they weren’t communicating well, or Shiloh was acting anxious, or just everything. On the other hand, this was very slow and very mundane. There wasn’t a lot of what a reader would expect out of a romance in it. Even a second-chance one. There was no third-act fallout, there was very little conflict or tension. And while I liked the thoughtful, reflective quality of a book, it’s not really what readers have come to expect out of something billed as romance.

Is this a book for everyone? Probably not. But I enjoyed it.