On the surface this should be my jam–old lovers reunited is one of my favorite tropes, and even more so when there’s a friendship at play as well. Plus small town dynamics? All the way!

But I had many issues with Persephone and how she’s written as a character, which is to say she’s just a foil for Fortune to hang a romance on. Nothing makes sense about how she ditches her best friend (a Token Character of Color, to boot) in the Big City when she decides to go back to where her One True Love lives. Who…would do that? Any person would be frantically texting their friends every night to figure out what to do next, what each interaction meant, etc. That’s just how friends work?

Which is to say I didn’t think that Fortune wanted to write a story about a woman who had moved on and had to wrestle with her past. She wanted to write about a girl who just happens to be older, which is an easier thing to do but not nearly as real. I suppose that’s usually the premise behind books that deal with One True Loves that got away–the Katy Perry song is playing in the background, the conceit is that people don’t change that much and can get back to the ones that they once loved who knew them Back Then. Then again, I do have many friends from Back Then who I feel are the only ones who truly know me…