Stephanie Perkins's OVERDUE

Thanks to partners NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC of Stephanie Perkins’s Overdue. The book is out now! 

Stephanie Perkins has long been an auto-read author for me. Her YA romance novels are absolutely gorgeous, full of first love and longing and unique teen protagonists. So, when I saw that she was publishing her first romance book for adults, I requested the egalley immediately.

Overdue is the story of a librarian, Ingrid Dahl, who is eleven years into a long-term relationship with Cory, her first boyfriend. They’re happy enough. Until maybe they’re not? When Ingrid’s sister announces her engagement, Ingrid and Cory wonder why they haven’t felt the urge to get married. The answer they land on is that they’re not willing to commit until they have some experiences outside their relationship. They give each other a month to date around, which—they’re confident—will inspire them to come back together and move their relationship forward.

When they settle on their arrangement, Ingrid immediately has her first date in mind: Macon, a fellow librarian on whom (she’ll barely admit to herself) she’s long had a crush. Macon is her best friend, her “work husband,” a curmudgeon, a plant guy. And when she approaches him, he rejects her. Horribly.

Now riddled by doubts, Ingrid makes some desperate efforts to follow through on the plan, to varying success. When she and Cory meet up after a month, neither is ready to call it quits. So, the arrangement continues.

This is act one of a multi-act, slow-burn romance in which Ingrid figures out who she is and what she wants from life and from love. While there’s so much here to rave about—Ingrid’s journey, her lovely friendships, her efforts to be friends with Macon after that horrific rejection—I’m not sure the burn needed to be quite this slow, and I never felt the wholesale giddiness that I often feel with Perkins’s YA romances. Then again, perhaps that’s the way it should be since the type of love Ingrid is looking for isn’t that unreserved first love but, instead, a love that will last and that will be true to her adult self, not the teenager she was when she first met Cory. And watching her slowly bring Macon back into the center of their friendship and, eventually, more is a beautiful journey.

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