About the book

Will and Rosie meet as teenagers. They're opposites in every way.

She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother's wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer – destined to be one another's great love story. Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered.

But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie can't help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been. What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just can't let go?

Why we love it

Well, who doesn't love a will they/won't they romance from time to time? 

Telling the story of Will and Rosie, from their first meeting as teenagers in the 1990s, this is a story of an evolving love and friendship over decades between two very different individuals.

When they meet, Rosie is a classic over-achiever, on a fast-track to Oxford and pushed to the brink by an overly controlling mother, while Will is the town rebel, smart but a little wild and unpredictable.

Instantly drawn together and recognising something of a kindred spirit within each other, life, loss and tragedy keeps pulling them apart. Somehow though, they can't quite let go of the possibility of each other either.

The book is split into three sections - Before, After and Long After - with each part focusing on a different time in their lives. The teenage years have just the right amount of nostalgia and pop culture references to be familiar to any one of a certain age, while the later parts zone in on all the messy, complexity of adult life. 

With themes of loss, grief, addiction and mental health, this is definitely no fluffy rom-com, but it somehow feels real and authentic in a way that contemporary love stories often don't.

Word of warning - there are no speech marks in the dialogue which I personally tend to find off-putting in a book, but the story of Rosie and Will hooked me in so thoroughly that to be honest I quickly stopped noticing it.

Perfect if you loved David Nicholl's One Day or for anyone who enjoys a messy, evolving love story between flawed, relatable characters.

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