I am obsessed with this rivals to lovers, queer romance story about ex-best friends. Here We Go Again is everything I love in a romance story all combined into one. It has the rivals, “I hate them so much” and “I will destroy them” mixed with queer feels and tons of history. Keep reading this book review of Here We Go Again for my full thoughts.
Summary
A long time ago, Logan Maletis and Rosemary Hale used to be friends. They spent their childhood summers running through the woods, rebelling against their conservative small town, and dreaming of escaping. But then an incident the summer before high school turned them into bitter rivals. After graduation, they went ten years without speaking.
Now in their thirties, Logan and Rosemary find they aren’t quite living the lives of adventure they imagined for themselves. Still in their small town and working as teachers at their alma mater, they’re both stuck in old patterns. Uptight Rosemary chooses security and stability over all else, working constantly, and her most stable relationship is with her label maker. Chaotic and impulsive Logan has a long list of misguided ex-lovers and an apathetic shrug she uses to protect herself from anything real. And as hard as they try to avoid each other—and their complicated past—they keep crashing into each other. Including with their cars.
But when their beloved former English teacher and lifelong mentor tells them he has only a few months to live, they’re forced together once and for all to fulfill his last a cross-country road trip. Stuffed into the gayest van west of the Mississippi, the three embark on a life-changing summer trip—from Washington state to the Grand Canyon, from the Gulf Coast to coastal Maine—that will chart a new future and perhaps lead them back to one another.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
We love to see ex BFFs who are forced to go on a road trip. Here We Go Again is full of laughter, tears, and swoons. It’s about two women who have a soft spot for the same teacher, who have loads of history, and who are smushed into a cross country van road trip. It’s full of forced proximity, only one room, and plenty of breakdowns. The past decade of silence, of stewing, and wondering what caused the rift. It’s about the people we love who let us down. The ones who show up even when no one else does.
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If you’ve ever had a teacher in your life who has made an impact on you, read Here We Go Again. It’s a love letter to the impact teachers can have on students, how they can alter trajectories and provide soft spots to land. Here We Go Again walks that line between love and hate. About that person we can’t get out of our head because we hate them so much. Right?
Here We Go Again is a love letter to life being about obstacles and road blocks. About the things we discover on the way to living. It’s full of disastrous shennanigans, talks about mental health, and regrets which haunt us. Find Here We Go Again on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop.org, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.