Here We Go Again

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review

She’d been publicly ridiculed and dumped, Joe was injured, and she’d rear-ended the shit out of her childhood best friend turned nemesis’s car.

Here We Go Again was a story of second chance love, grief, and shedding those childhood hurts. Logan and Rosemary were childhood friends who's friendship ended when a kiss throws confusion and misunderstandings into the mix. Now, as adults teaching at their old high-school, they carefully try to avoid each other. Logan wanted to travel and see the world but when her mother up and left her father, she didn't want to hurt her father by leaving him too, so she still lives at home and has a string of meaningless relationships. Rosemary was the dedicated student who left and taught at a prestigious school, until her dedication was amplified by her anxiety and always having to be perfect, all leading to her having a break down and coming home. When a teacher that made a huge difference in both their lives, ropes them into a cross-country trip, they're forced to confront each other and themselves.

She is thirty-two, crashing into Logan. Always crashing into her. Three years of friendship, four years of hating each other, ten years of not talking, and then this.

I'm not going to lie to you, you're going to hurt when you read this. The teacher, Joe, has cancer and he's decided to not do another round of chemo, so he only has a few weeks to live. The road trip starts in the first half and we get “I've made a binder for the trip” Rosemary and “Let's detour!” Logan and Joe, butting up against each other. The clashing personalities help readers learn more about the characters, Rosemary is scared of not being perfect and her ADHD plays into this, her father dying young, and having a workaholic mother, have made her insulate herself because she can't handle surprises. Logan also has ADHD and with her mother just leaving and not staying in her life, she's scared to really get close to someone in fear of the hurt she'll endure if they leave. Individually, these two have issues to work out and then there is the hold-over of the “kiss”. Logan doesn't even know that Rosemary is a lesbian until a little before the midway point.

Because Logan was everything she wasn’t: tall and loud and goofy; brave and unfiltered, quick to laughter, quicker to tears, every big feeling inside her worn boldly on the outside.

The road trip has Logan and Rosemary calling a friendship truce for Joe and as they detour more, their walls start to break down. This was told in povs from Logan and Rosemary but Joe is a big part of the story and half-way through, he gets his own second chance when one of his life's regrets takes them to Mississippi and an old love. Rosemary and Logan have their own break through and we get an open door scene as they come together. I thought the story slowed some as they stayed in MS but then it rushes as the reality of Joe's illness hits and they quickly make their way to Maine where he wants to die in his cabin on the water.

Rosemary kisses Logan Maletis in the rain outside an Albuquerque hospital, and dammit, she tastes like strawberries.

The grief that's been building hits hard in this last half ending and while Rosemary has pretty much dealt with her issues after a session with her therapist, Logan still struggles, especially with Joe's reality finally hitting her. We get, kind of a rushed, moment with Logan seeking out her mother and finally trying to put that pain to bed.

Everything is beautiful and painful.

Even though some levity pops up here and there with Logan and Rosemary playing off each other, there is so much grief in this (not that romance can't have grief!) and Joe plays such a big part, that I hesitate to strictly call this romance genre, it's more fiction with romance to me but your mileage may vary and all that. The, still, realities of being gay in America were a part of the story instead of being ignored and added a fabric layer, there were some flashbacks to Logan and Rosemary in high-school that I thought helped fill out their background, and we got an epilogue that showed these two were on the HEA road. If you want to read a road tripping, second chances, putting childhood hurts away, with it's going to make you hurt grief, then you should pick this one up.