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alexawkelly 's review for:
Here We Go Again
by Alison Cochrun
Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.
I’m a big fan of road trip stories, and, given how much I enjoyed Cochrun’s sophomore novel, Kiss Her Once for Me, my expectations going into this book were fairly high. And they were not at all disappointed–although in many ways, this fact ended up surprising me.
First, the romantic setup was great, with a ton of potential for interesting conflict: the two main characters are childhood best friends who, thanks to a gay panic-related misunderstanding when the two were fourteen, quickly turned into nemeses. Life circumstances have led them both to the last place they ever thought they’d be spending their adulthood: teaching high school at their own alma mater, in the same small, conservative town they dreamed of escaping when they were younger. And while they still can’t stand each other as coworkers, they have one extremely important thing in common: their former English teacher, Joe Delgado, who, in addition to being a father figure to both of them for most of their lives well into adulthood (both characters experienced a form of parental loss while still young children, and Joe stepped in at a vulnerable time), has recently received the news that the cancer he’s been fighting has metastasized. He’s officially dying, and his dying wish is to be taken on a final road trip to Maine so that he can die on his own terms, in his vacation house in Bar Harbor, close to the ocean. And he needs both of them to do this with him.
Former best friends turned enemies who are forced to work together is a plot device I already really enjoy, and the more lighthearted, humorous parts of the novel were just as fun, cute, and funny as I’d anticipated. I really liked that the two main characters were such polar opposites–Rosemary is a type A worrier, planner, and neat freak, while Logan is more laid-back and prefers to fly by the seat of her pants–but that, once they began to really resolve their differences, they actively worked to use their differences to support one another. The road trip part of the story was a lot of fun, too; I appreciated that as much of the trip was about seeing cool places, like the Grand Canyon, as it was about the characters growing and changing as people.
There were a few things that didn’t quite work for me–some of the humor comes across kind of woodenly (a LOT of jokes about the fact that Joe, who is dying, has to wear adult diapers–maybe this would be funny to someone else, but it just made me sad), and Logan’s quirk of expressing surprise by shouting the names of queer icons (i.e. “Hayley fucking Kiyoko!” or “Shay fucking Mitchell!”) was honestly just kind of annoying. (Though I’m not too proud to admit it was fun seeing which queer icons, or queer-adjacent icons like Laura Dern, the author chose to include.) I also thought that the third act conflict was pretty bad in terms of easily resolvable miscommunication, though I have some grace for this, because it doesn’t last very long–to the point where I’m not even sure if calling it the third act conflict is accurate–and it occurs at a time of extremely heightened emotion due to an outside event, so it makes sense to me that perhaps communication wouldn’t be first on anyone’s mind.
What surprised me most about this novel, though–and the thing, honestly, that pushes it from a three star read to a four star–was how it doesn’t shy away for a second from the reality of Joe’s impending death. Without giving too much of the third half of the book away, I will say that there are things that happen that feel surprising for this particular genre of fiction. Things that are not happy or particularly hopeful, things that are some of the hardest emotions we as humans can possibly feel–and the author doesn’t spare us any of them. I’m not someone who cries over books very easily, but there were two occasions where what I was reading was so reminiscent of when my grandmother was in hospice care that I couldn’t help bawling. I’d go so far to say that it’s a pretty bold move for a book like this, and for me personally, it really paid off.
Alison Cochrun is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors of queer romance. I can’t wait to see where she takes us next.
I’m a big fan of road trip stories, and, given how much I enjoyed Cochrun’s sophomore novel, Kiss Her Once for Me, my expectations going into this book were fairly high. And they were not at all disappointed–although in many ways, this fact ended up surprising me.
First, the romantic setup was great, with a ton of potential for interesting conflict: the two main characters are childhood best friends who, thanks to a gay panic-related misunderstanding when the two were fourteen, quickly turned into nemeses. Life circumstances have led them both to the last place they ever thought they’d be spending their adulthood: teaching high school at their own alma mater, in the same small, conservative town they dreamed of escaping when they were younger. And while they still can’t stand each other as coworkers, they have one extremely important thing in common: their former English teacher, Joe Delgado, who, in addition to being a father figure to both of them for most of their lives well into adulthood (both characters experienced a form of parental loss while still young children, and Joe stepped in at a vulnerable time), has recently received the news that the cancer he’s been fighting has metastasized. He’s officially dying, and his dying wish is to be taken on a final road trip to Maine so that he can die on his own terms, in his vacation house in Bar Harbor, close to the ocean. And he needs both of them to do this with him.
Former best friends turned enemies who are forced to work together is a plot device I already really enjoy, and the more lighthearted, humorous parts of the novel were just as fun, cute, and funny as I’d anticipated. I really liked that the two main characters were such polar opposites–Rosemary is a type A worrier, planner, and neat freak, while Logan is more laid-back and prefers to fly by the seat of her pants–but that, once they began to really resolve their differences, they actively worked to use their differences to support one another. The road trip part of the story was a lot of fun, too; I appreciated that as much of the trip was about seeing cool places, like the Grand Canyon, as it was about the characters growing and changing as people.
There were a few things that didn’t quite work for me–some of the humor comes across kind of woodenly (a LOT of jokes about the fact that Joe, who is dying, has to wear adult diapers–maybe this would be funny to someone else, but it just made me sad), and Logan’s quirk of expressing surprise by shouting the names of queer icons (i.e. “Hayley fucking Kiyoko!” or “Shay fucking Mitchell!”) was honestly just kind of annoying. (Though I’m not too proud to admit it was fun seeing which queer icons, or queer-adjacent icons like Laura Dern, the author chose to include.) I also thought that the third act conflict was pretty bad in terms of easily resolvable miscommunication, though I have some grace for this, because it doesn’t last very long–to the point where I’m not even sure if calling it the third act conflict is accurate–and it occurs at a time of extremely heightened emotion due to an outside event, so it makes sense to me that perhaps communication wouldn’t be first on anyone’s mind.
What surprised me most about this novel, though–and the thing, honestly, that pushes it from a three star read to a four star–was how it doesn’t shy away for a second from the reality of Joe’s impending death. Without giving too much of the third half of the book away, I will say that there are things that happen that feel surprising for this particular genre of fiction. Things that are not happy or particularly hopeful, things that are some of the hardest emotions we as humans can possibly feel–and the author doesn’t spare us any of them. I’m not someone who cries over books very easily, but there were two occasions where what I was reading was so reminiscent of when my grandmother was in hospice care that I couldn’t help bawling. I’d go so far to say that it’s a pretty bold move for a book like this, and for me personally, it really paid off.
Alison Cochrun is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors of queer romance. I can’t wait to see where she takes us next.