I love a second chance romance but this one was just okay. I didn’t find myself connecting to either Clare or Teddy and thus I became disinterested in the history between them. I think this would have been improved if we had some chapters from Teddy’s perspective. Clara’s character fell pretty flat and boring. She’s a history professor who plays “Mom” to her college age sister. She carries a flame for her childhood best friend however they haven’t spoken in years. Teddy is also a history professor who has a difficult family past. The “past” chapters cover their camp years, when Clare and Teddy built their friendship. I didn’t really understand their friendship fully- it didn’t seem like they’d grow that close over a small span of shared time. The “present” chapters displayed their chemistry better but I was pretty annoyed with how close they grew so fast despite their huge falling out. It went from second chance to instalove vibes VERY quick. I also also super annoyed by their apparent miscommunication that caused them to break apart. Overall not horrible but I didn’t love it.

Academic, second chance romance that really hits the fall feelings. As someone who's never attended a summer camp it can be a bit grating at times, but the dual timelines was key to keeping me in the story. Kudos to Miller for he work on that aspect.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press | St. Martin's Griffin and NetGalley for providing an eARC for a honest review.

This book is a lot of fun. I am usually the person who does not like flashbacks in second chance romances, but I loved them in this book! All the millennial nostalgia callbacks were spot on perfection and had me in stitches and giggling at times. Their relationship progression was beautiful. The writing was well done. I found much of the story very relatable. The descriptions of anxiety were exactly right.

The meet cute at summer camp was ADORABLE!

THEMES:
Adjunct history professor x visiting history researcher
Childhood best friends
Second chance romance
Forced proximity
Shared office space
The most hilarious strong language alternatives
Former homeschool students romance
Flashbacks full of all the nostalgia
Rediscovering sense of self

Content: strong language, kissing, teen touching, teen s*xting, explicit s*x, older male oriented work related personality and appearance suppression


Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Griffin for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review is voluntarily written and the thoughts and opinions contained in this review are my own.

Clara has been estranged from her best friend Teddy for years. Just as everything seems to be going according to plan, Teddy shows up in her life once more and she questions her past, present and future.

Given Our History was such a fun read! Clara is a history buff and has an annoying younger sibling, so I immediately saw myself in her. This book is told in a non-linear way, jumping between the past and present which was really fun and shows just how brilliant Kristyn J. Miller is as a writer. I rarely read contemporary romances but this one had me turning the pages and staying up late reading when I could. Overall a great time!

Thank you St. Martin’s Press, St. Martin’s Griffin and Netgalley for the chance to read it early.

Oooh I loved this! I love how it shows how true it is that our individual histories shape us, but that we can't let any of our bad pasts hurt our future. And I absolutely enjoyed the dual time line and the FMC! I was really rooting for Clara and Teddy the whole time! So good!!

Thank you to NetGalley and to St Martin's Press for my digital ARC!!

I was instantly drawn to the premise of this book. While I thought it was cute, it was a bit slow to get in to. Still an enjoyable read but not my favorite..

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC of Given Our History - I was so excited about this one, and it did not disappoint. I love academia as a subplot, and this one is done really well! Also, the dual timelines of the backstory of Clara and Teddy growing up together, paralleled with their current life, was excellent. This is a fantastic second-chance romance that felt real, raw, funny, and sweet. I definitely recommend picking this one up!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read the ARC of Given Our History by Kristyn J. Miller. The story of Clara and Teddy is a familiar one – girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, girl doesn’t end up with boy when she clearly should. This tale didn’t disappoint though! When Teddy uncoincidentally lands back in Clara’s life, try as she might, there is no denying the love is not lost between these two.
The story was incredibly well-written; I really could honestly see the crowd in the bar and the guests at the gala! I also loved the fact that the female lead was goal oriented for herself and not for others. It was refreshing. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this read. I would absolutely recommend it for any rom-com lover to add to their TBR. Bonus would be to curl up with a cozy blanket and a warm drink and read Given Our History with an autumn breeze!

3 stars ⭐️

I wanted to read this because it was a second chance romance which is one of my favorite tropes, the cover was beautiful, and I was in a mood for an academic-driven book. Sadly, I find the most interesting aspect of the book is the cover.

Clara first meets Teddy at a sleepaway camp because they are both homeschooled and this is their only "opportunity" to make friends and socialize. The camp aspect was so much fun and it reminded me of the parent trap. I don't think they did anything particularly special, but it was nostalgic in the way it was written that you had to wait for the phone calls, that the telephone line didn't extend far enough and you're stuck in the kitchen talking to your friend with everyone around. Today's kids will never understand.

What I can admire is the uniqueness of this second chance romance. It definitely isn't like most of the other ones I have read. There's no cheating, no big event that makes them run away. It's simply life getting in the way, being the right person and the wrong time. Also, their music taste was perfect. My Chemical Romance? Taking back sunday? Thank you for the emo representation for real!!!! it's so refreshing to not read about taylor swift in a romance book.

Ultimately, what ruined this book for me was how boring it was. Should I have expected that with how academia-focused the book was? Maybe. Clara, in present time, is trying to get on the tenure track. That, and she's on a scholarship committee which gets info dumped, along with a billion other professor-y things that I don't care about. It's very slow paced, very low-stakes, and tame.

It takes more than half the book before anything interesting really begins to happen. Teddy is there, yes, but he's so vacant in the first half of the book in the present chapters it's almost as if it's not a romance book at all. (I may be remembering this wrong, because I was really bored while reading and mostly checked out.) And while the past chapters took place at a sleepaway camp, not all of them do. They stop once after maybe three or four of them, and then the past chapters are them just being separated trying to come together again, which is a seemingly difficult task for both of them considering the distance, and we're stuck in Clara's POV which is not a desirable place to be. I really did not care for her character at all.

Once they were together, or were trying to be, they were cute, though I will say that neither Clara nor Teddy exhibit any real likable traits or qualities. They didn't stand out to me in any way. I didn't connect with either of them at all and they didn't come alive to me in the pages. They were forgettable and if this weren't an arc I would have dnf'ed by the early pages to be honest. I can't even recall what they supposedly look like either. I just found myself not caring. I'm struggling to write this review because I can barely recall anything that happens in this book aside from snippets that I've highlighted.

The side characters were also very underdeveloped. Izzy, Clara's friend from sleepaway camp, is still in contact with her but she's abroad and they, from the beginning of the book, miss each other's calls and texts etc. This just seemed lazy to me and I wasn't appreciative of that. Clara also just uses her only other "work friend" Bel to her own gain when needed and then they barely talk after that. I also have no idea what year these take place, because they're friends over seventeen years, and then they don't talk for ten? I really don't know the timeline and was pretty confused. (Again, didn't pay much attention either)

Since second chance is one of my favorite tropes, I'm always eager to read new ones. This one unfortunately did not deliver any angst or painful yearning that most second chance romances book evoke in me. But thank you netgalley for the arc

I absolutely loved this book!! at first i was a little iffy but i completely fell in love with these two!!

‘Given Our History’ is a moving story about second chances and a love that spans decades. Set across two timelines, we learn how Clara and Teddy fell effortlessly in love as teens, only to spend years hiding it from themselves and each other. When luck has them working in the same history department at the same college, after 9 years of being apart, Clara and Teddy slowly learn to open their hearts once again and let go of all the ‘what ifs’. Because after 19 years, they finally deserve their chance at love.

With a colorful cast of characters, a small university town, and a story full of longing, Kristyn Miller delivers a fantastic second-chance, friends-to-lovers romance. Trust me, you will not be able to put this book down!

They were once inseparable, but then life got complicated. Now, the two main characters must figure out how to interact with each other as they deal with their feelings and pasts.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for granting me access to this book in exchange for an honest review.

What a charming friends to lovers, second chance romance set against an academic backdrop!! With its dual timeline and slow burn romance, I was completely captivated and invested in Clara and Teddy's story. I absolutely loved this book and found myself smiling, laughing, and swooning throughout. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy of this book to read and review. All thoughts are my own.

I enjoyed this book for the most part. The plot was cute and the characters were likable. I will say that I felt like nothing really happened. It switched back and forth between the past and present which was fine but I just don’t feel like much was going on and that it needed more information and story.

If you are looking for a fast pace, cute romance then I’d recommend this to you.

3 stars

A tender, quiet story about second chances with your first love. Clara leads a low key life as an assistant professor in a university town. Which would probably be less interesting without her younger sister around. Things become even more interesting when Teddy pops back into her life. An unhurried romance.

Given Our History by Kristyn J. Miller is a delightful second chance romance that takes place in an academic setting. The dual timeline explained Clara and Teddy's relationship from when they met as homeschooled kids at camp, to their split and to meeting again as adults. It flowed, fleshed out the characters and was a great novel! Don't miss this one! 🩷

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Given Our History is a second chance, dual storyline book that I had no strong feelings for. It is infrequent for me not to get strong emotions about any book genre, and it is even rarer for that book to be a romance. I love romance in all shapes and forms. So, when I got the widget for this book, it was going to be something that I enjoyed. Instead, I was “meh” about it.

Don’t get me wrong; I thought the storyline for Given Our History was interesting. It tracks Teddy and Clara’s friendship from their early teens attending a camp catered towards homeschooled kids in the Blue Ridge Mountains to the event that caused them to stop talking to each other and eventually work at the same college. The author covered everything perfectly, with the main storyline split between the past and present.

I did like Clara. She was a quirky person trying her hardest to be considered for a tenured position at the college. Clara also had a lot of baggage; some centered around Teddy, but the rest centered on her home life. I loved that she was a history nerd, and the random facts that the author integrated into Teddy and Clara’s conversations (when they were teens) had me googling them. But, at the same time, I felt that Clara was too stuck on Teddy and didn’t allow anyone else in her life. The beginning scene in the prologue is where she bumps into Teddy and his girlfriend at a deli (where she is meeting a professor) and acts like a child. That theme repeated throughout the book and wasn’t a good look for a character that I otherwise liked.

I also liked Teddy. The author wasn’t as forthcoming with his life and issues as she was with Clara’s. In some spots, getting any information about Teddy other than what she shared was almost painful. Like Clara, he was a huge history nerd and had a home life that wasn’t the best.

The romance angle of the book was very slow-moving. There was a point in the book where I was mentally urging them to go faster because it was starting to bore me. I also raised an eyebrow at how old-fashioned Clara was around her younger sister (who was super spoiled). But the romance did eventually heat up, but even then, it was lukewarm.

The secondary storyline about Clara trying to get tenure made me see red when it was wrapped up. I did agree with Clara and her immediate actions after that meeting, but still, it made me so angry.

The end of Given Our History was your typical HEA. I liked that Clara and Teddy finally got together.

Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press, St. Martin’s Griffin, NetGalley, and Kristyn J. Miller for allowing me to read and review this ARC of Given Our History. All opinions stated in this review are mine.

There is something so cozy about a romance set in an academic setting during the fall which sets the vibe for the story to play out. In Given Our History, Clara Fernsby is achieving her dreams as a History Professor at a Liberal Arts College. But as the school year opens, the new visiting scholar in her department, turns out to be someone with whom she has romantic history. The story unfolds in a dual timeline and we get to see the missed chances that this couple have had in the past. Both Clara and Teddy are introverted and likeable. Their personalities play into the story a great deal. The story in the past is filled with references to the 2000s which made the time period feel authentic and a bit nostalgic. While the story has a great fall romance feel, it is also perfect for anyone who likes and academic romance.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Griffin for the advanced reader copy.

Clara, a history professor, finds herself again in close quarters with her high school sweetheart/best friend Teddy. Theirs is a long history of pull and push. Through flashbacks we get a full timeline of their lives together and why they were meant to have their HEA.

I know it’s the middle of the summer but this sweet read had me thinking of falling leaves and fresh romance! I loved this book, I loved the chemistry, I loved the character building, it was the best cozy fall romance.