This was very very very very very white. not my jam but I guess besides that it was a cute little story. Dragged towards the end though.

Alison Cochrun does it again! This was such a heartbreaking but touching story. Definitely an emotional book filled with a lot of heart. Lots of humor thrown in as well. Cochrun always writes a great love story and this was no exception. I really enjoyed this book.

Alison Cochrun hit me in the feels with her latest book! She does such an incredible job at incorporating humor in her stories, but in a heartwarming way.

Logan and Rosemary are two very different characters, but I loved the relationship between them. They start off as friends (prior to the book starting), then we see them as enemies turned lovers. Their dynamic made for a great story.

For those who like their books with a medium level of spice, this book is perfect. It is not overly graphic, but is enough to be sexy.

If you are someone who finds books about cancer or death triggering, I'd either suggest skipping this one, or if you still want to read, make sure you are in a good head space. Most of the book is pretty light hearted, but the ending is heavy.

Thank-you to NetGalley, Atria Books, and Alison Cochrun for the eARC.

This book absolutely solidified Alison Cochrun as an auto-buy author for me. Anyone who knows me knows how much I ADORED THE CHARM OFFENSIVE and how I take the opportunity to recommend it to absolutely anyone who will listen. I didn't think it possible, but I loved this book even more.

The emotional whiplash I experienced while reading this book was INTENSE, one moment I was giggling and having a good time and the next I'm weeping so hard I couldn't even see the page in front of me.

This book was so incredibly beautiful I genuinely cannot even find the words to describe, you just HAVE to read it for yourself. It immediately became one of my go-to recommendations at work and, in real life, reading it is now a requirement to maintain a friendship with me. ;-)

I reallyyyyyy wanted to like this book but it just wasn’t for me and didn’t do the trick, I love the cover and the premise, I’d be willing to try again in the future with a different book by this author

This was such a cute book! I loved Joe from the beginning, and was super sad with his end even though we knew it was going to happen. I’m glad Logan and Rosemary took him on his roadtrip, and made the pit stops. I loved Logan and Rosemary together as well!

Loved this as much as Cochrun’s past books! Such a great exploration in end of life care and grief and love and family.

Name a better duo than Alison Cochrun and getting me to tolerate and even agree with a third act break up because one and/or both of her incredibly well written characters DESPERATELY needs therapy before being anywhere near correct to be in this relationship. I'll wait.

Anyways, I'm UNWELL and I need to stop letting this devil woman do this to me (unlikely) This was stunning and I don't see it leaving my head for a long time.

I absolutely loved it. But I would add a caveat that you should probably not read this if someone you love is dying of cancer or recently died of cancer. It was *heartbreaking* even without that.

I went into it expecting a light romance - it appears to be marketed as a "queer rom com" - and boy howdy is that not what this is. But it was beautiful and I'm glad I read it. It's a good thing I was listening to the audiobook though because I sobbed through approximately the last half of the book.

The light romance is there, as is the humor, it just often takes a backseat to the story of the girls watching their former teacher and beloved mentor succumb to cancer. There is so much joy they discover in that final road trip, and so much pain, and honestly I can't think of it without starting to tear up again.

I definitely felt this one more than any other book I've read this year.

The audiobook was performed brilliantly and the narrators perfectly captured all the humor and love and pain and heartbreak. 10/10

*Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing an early copy for review.

Logan and Rosemary used to be best friends until something happened. Now they both work as teachers at their local high school. They met Joe Delgado in 9th grade he was their mentor and surrogate father. Joe is dying of Pancreatic cancer and wants to die in Maine. He requests that both girls drive him there.

Logan is hilarious and broken. She had me laughing all throughout the book. This book is filled with so much heart and love. I laughed and bawled. Such good insights about love and life. Joe and Odie are my favorite characters. 😭

🌼 LGBTQia
🌺 Second chance Romance
🌸 Enemies to Lovers
💔 Cancer/Death

Here We Go Again was a special book for me. Thank you @netgalley for this ebook ARC.

By all accounts it should be a sad book, and it was certainly bittersweet, but mostly it was about love in its purest forms: childhood loves, mentor loves, found and chosen family, and long-term loves. It's a lovely cousin to The Guncle, if that touched your heart.

My two main comments are about neurodivergent representation and grief/loss, two of my favorite storytelling angles.

Blessedly, this book presented multiple sides of ADHD symptoms for different people, was honest about mental health and its sidecars, and let Logan and Rosie grow in their own lanes before together. So often we see neurodivergent queer characters parentify their relationship or cast aside their symptoms for the sake of love and this was a notably mature novel in that it accepts the symptoms and supports the person who has them without judgement.

I also love love love a beautiful novel about grief and living, and Alison Cochran nailed the complexity of dying and living with agency, joy, dignity care, owning your choices, and a tribe of found family members navigating it all together for the first time.

I wish I could read it for the first time again. But now, for a good cry and a great sunset. Thank you, @alisoncochrun from this queer kid who hid in her English teacher's room for lunch, too.

This was such a fun read! I read it in two days. I think it was a really unique and profound approach to the second-chance romance trope, and a road trip setting always keeps things interesting and moving along at a good pace. I could have done without the "Hayley fucking Kiyoko!" recurring joke, and each MC representing a different side of the ADHD-in-women-coin felt heavy handed at times, but the characters were well developed and, by the end, likeable. The descriptions of their time in ?Mississippi? with Joe's second chance (whose name I cannot remember now) were very dreamy and were one of the highlights of the book for me.

What an absolutely delightful read. In reading Logan and Rosemary's story, I reflected deeply about end of life care and our responsibility to those we love. In addition to laughing out loud with glee and pausing with reflection, I'm also endlessly grateful for Cochrun's exploration of the way that ADHD can manifest differently. The familiarity of Rosemary's experience with ADHD prompted me to finally get my ADHD diagnosed in my late 30s.

I'm smiling as I type and highly recommend this read!

Thank you to Atria Books | Simon & Schuster for sharing an ARC.

Thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for the ARC of this!

This was a fun, bittersweet, second-chance, road-trip romance. The story of two women helping their former teacher take one last road-trip didn't shy away from the realities of dying.

Well, no one writes messy realistic feelings like Alison Cochrun. Two high school frenemies set off on am ill-advised road trip with their beloved high school English teacher, whose dying wish is for them to take him to Bar Harbor, Maine, so he can die in peace on his own terms. It’s funny and sad, poignant and looks death, queer identify, and other topics straight-on. Would recommend!

This was so heartbreakingly beautiful! Definitely a tear jerker with a ton of heart! The romance was excellent but I loved the relationship between the two main characters and Joe so much! Please check CWs, but as always, Alison Cochrun writes some of the best emotional romances!

“Life is the prickly pear. It’s always going to be a combination of beauty and hurt, no matter how hard you try to protect yourself from the hard parts. There is no way to avoid pain.”

Wow! This it going to be one of my top reads of 2024, but warning do not read this one in public. This book is simply incredible and incredibly emotional! It was funny and witty, charming and insightful, and it had just enough steam and lust.

First, the character growth in this book is exceptional. Logan never takes anything seriously, and Rosemary takes everything too seriously. I can totally relate to Rosemary by the way! However, both are working to avoid the same things – hurt, love, loss and pain. Their approach is just different. I loved reading both their self-discovery and the way they helped each other to realize this, change and grow.

Then, you have the Joe, their teacher, mentor, friend and found family. His death trip is inspiring, and I hope to be this brave if faced with the same life path. He was committed to not only helping people but also making things right in his own life in the time he had left. He lived his last few months with no regrets. If only we could do that throughout our lives and not wait until the very end.

Lastly, and this is not a spoiler as we know Joe is dying, the end is perfection. I sat by my dad as he took his last few breaths. The final 2.5 weeks with him were hard. We laughed and cried and loved. The author admits in her notes she has not experienced first-hand death, but in my experience, she got it exactly right. I must admit there were ugly sobs at this part. If you love someone deeply, you hurt deeply when they die. It truly is an honor to be there for someone at the end. This book has all the feels and will stay with me for a lifetime.

Thank you to @atriabooks and @netgalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review

Thank you Netgalley for the free arc in exchange for an honest review.

ALISON COCHRUN HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME LAUGH AND CRY SO MUCH IN ONE BOOK.

I knew I was in safe hands in regard to the romance from Cochrun's previous books and the comedy came on quick with the first two chapters being set in an Applebee's while our main characters are dumped and fired respectfully, but the heart and tears I did not expect. I knew Cochrun could handle heavier topics but I believe this book, while technically a romance, is so much more than just a romance. Many romance books handle heavier topics and have genuine plot in conjunction with the romance, but Here We Go Again truly felt like I was reading literary fiction with this beautiful story of a dying man's last wish. The details related to growing old as a queer man and celebrating the fact that they survived against all odds from homophobia to the AIDS epidemic to be able to grow old.

Besides the plot, I also did love our main characters Rosemary and Logan. They also are quite complex with many of their own issues that they must work out before they are able to have their happy ever after. I loved them together and all of their issues felt like real issues as opposed to some romances where it feels like any tension is completely arbitrary and does not actually matter. They are dealing with abandonment issues, substance use disorder, and accompanying their English teacher, who is like a parent to them, on a road trip he will 100% be dying on, just to name a few. They were messy and chaotic but so in love and helping each other heal. It was beautiful,

This book was great, and I cannot wait to see what Alison Cochrun puts out next,

Thanks to Atria Books for my copy of Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun.

Two childhood friends turned high school enemies are now in their 30s and both teaching English in the small town they grew up in. When their beloved former English teacher and mentor shares that he only has a few months to live, Logan and Rosemary decide to fulfill his last wish of a cross-country road trip.

I found the characters very immature and while a cute premise it seems a little too fat fetched.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for an advanced e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

I enjoyed the second half of this story far and above the beginning of it. Joe as a former teacher of two students is…crossing some lines in terms of interaction and what he asks of two female students. Sexuality notwithstanding (it felt like the things he said and did were only permissible because he was gay and they were lesbians) I kept feeling uncomfortable about the dependent relationship forced on these characters due to circumstance and a feeling of obligation. Logan is chaotic and purposefully mean to/pushes Rosemary’s buttons even though they’re on an important journey helping someone they both supposedly love and it would behoove her to at least act like an adult. She also constantly compares Rosemary’s facial expressions/the shape of her mouth to a cat’s butt….even when she eventually comes around to wanting to kiss her, and that felt gross.

(Also I was virtually begging for the “celebrity-first-name F-word celebrity-last-name” swearing convention to stop. The story literally needed perhaps two of these mentions to make a humorous impact and with a quick search in my digital copy, this gag happened 26 TIMES. It quickly became less funny and more exhausting.)

But the second half was full of beautiful portraits of love, acceptance, and what it means to know what you want towards the end of your life. The secondary characters the second half of the book introduced were some of my favorites of the entire story, and I did in fact ugly cry. In the end, Cochrun’s “The Charm Offensive” still gets my vote for favorite romance she’s written, but the second half of this story did redeem some of it’s off-balance start.