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Assistant professor Clara Fernsby is nothing if not driven. She's wanted to teach history since she was fourteen, and she hasn't let anything stand in her way―not even the love of her life. And it all paid off in the end, because she landed a well-paid position at a private liberal arts college fresh out of grad school, and this year, she's finally up for tenure.
When Theodore Harrison is brought on for the fall semester as a visiting scholar, it's an unexpected blast from Clara's past. She hasn't spoken to Teddy since rejecting him over a phone call ten years ago. Now that he's here, she's reminded of their time together at every turn: autumns spent at a sleepaway camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains, trading battered history books and burned CDs with the quiet, dark-haired boy she once fell in love with.
That boy might've been her best friend, but the man teaching HIST-322 is a total stranger―or so she thinks. As they spend evenings working on a shared project and brainstorming over drinks at a college bar, Clara realizes she's at risk of falling all over again. Given their history, she knows there's every chance he's not interested. But history's all down to interpretation, and this time around, she's got no intentions of repeating it.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
August 27, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9798890930514
- File size: 293320 KB
- Duration: 10:11:03
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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December 6, 2024
A tumultuous past full of friendship, first love, and heartbreak can't stand in the way of the second chance presented to history professor Clara Fernsby when her estranged childhood best friend (and love of her life) Teddy Harrison is assigned to share an office with her while on a visiting professorship. While Clare tries to keep her distance and focus on preparing for her tenure case with a fundraising gala, Teddy has other plans, intentionally trying to spend more time with her. Although they haven't spoken in a decade, their history pulls them together, and Miller (Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts) weaves in flashbacks to pivotal moments in their lives leading up to the estrangement--meeting each other, their long-distance history club, their first kiss, and their refusal to compromise their goals and careers. The sweet portrayals of friendship and how sometimes it's the right person at the wrong time are the jewels of this otherwise fairly flat novel. The stakes for nearly everything feel tepid or glazed over, the pacing of both the plot and the narration is slow bordering on plodding, and many of the characters lack depth. Narrator Erin Bennett lends each character a distinct voice, although she doesn't get to utilize them much, as Clara's internal monologue takes up the majority of the novel. VERDICT A cute friends-to-enemies-to-friends-to-lovers story that falls short of rom-com greatness.--Zoey Colglazier
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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