3.5 stars.

"The Backtrack" by Erin La Rosa is the kind of book that is made for someone like me, full of 2000s era nostalgia and earmarkers of my youth. That's what drew me to this novel in the first place. I am of the age where all of the songs, bands, and cultural phenomenon discussed in this book we're relevant to me and my friend group. I love the idea of a possessed Walkman used as a conduit to show the main female character, Sam, what could have been if she had only done one thing differently in her life: kissed her best friend, Damon. When they were teenagers, Damon asked if he could kiss Sam... and she declined. Shortly after their high school graduation, she left their small Georgia town and never looked back. Since then she has become a pilot, But is seemingly haunted by her decision not to kiss Damon. Circumstances are such that she must return to her hometown after promising not to. She has to move her grandma Pearl ut of her childhood home and has come to help. This means drudging up old memories, including the ones attached to the mixtape/mix-CD Damon made for her when they were younger. Whenever sam listens to one of the tracks on her Walkman, She is transported into a timewarped alternate reality where she had kissed Damon and her life was drastically different, some good, some bad. I liked about fifty percent of this book. Once Sam's mom, Bonnie, comes back into the picture, I think the book's pacing really slows to a crawl. While I don't hate this storyline, I think it is so slowly paced ompared to the rest of the book that I almost did not finish it. I liked Sam and Damon as characters individually, but I did not feel a lot of chemistry between them as a couple. In both timelines, I did not feel anything for them. There is not a lot of banter and not a lot of pining despite years of time between them. Even when they finally get over all of the obstacles in their way in the present actual reality, I can't really say I was rooting for them or excited when they got together. I really liked how Sam wanted to take care of herself above all else because the role model she had in her mom growing up was not good/was absent. She wanted to be the complete opposite of Bonnie, and she managed to somewhat do that... but at what cost? Despite Bonnie showing up about sixty percent into the book, it feels like there is not a lot of resolution until the very last bit of the story. Sam gains a new perspective on Bonnie being a teenage mother and comes to terms with the fact that she was not there for her while she was growing up because of her own trauma related to being a teen mom and being scared. Apart from sam I did not have any big feelings towards any other character in this book. I did not like Sam's present day best friend, Rachel, at all. Though the circumstances were a little zany, I felt like she was not a very good, supportive friend to Sam. I was excited to see the saucy grandma character, Pearl, and learn about her shenanigans because I love a good nasty/dirty old lady character, but she felt flat for me as well. All in all, this book is a mixed bag.

Thank you to NetGalley, Erin La Rosa, Harlequin Trade Publishing, and Canary Street Press for the complimentary ARC of this book. All opinions are my own. I was not compensated for this review.

I enjoy Erin La Rosa’s writing and storytelling. I liked the characters and the story. Will definitely read more from this author!!

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley. Review based on final copy. All opinions are my own.
The Backtrack is another fun romance from Erin La Rosa with a solid, fairly unique premise. With the rise of nostalgic, time-warp romances in the vein of 13 Going on 30, I’ve often felt they’ve been missing the mutual character and romantic development on both leads’ part, and worse, rendering a lot of the progress moot. This one, while still more in the vein of the “modern romcom,” in being single POV, subverted this through the power of a magic CD player and mixtape, allowing for brief glimpses into an alternate reality to see what might have been, without completely dispensing with the “real” reality entirely. And as someone who was mildly into alternative music as a teenager and has embraced it more with the revival of pop-punk today, I loved the references to bands of the time, and how they literally provided a portal to the past.
Sam is easy to root for. She’s moved away from her town, but she’s summoned back when her Grandma Pearl is injured. She has a lot of painful childhood memories she’s been running from that she’s now forced to confront, and I appreciate how this particular plotline was discussed.
While the reader isn’t given insights into Damon’s perspective, I think it works here, and he felt fairly well fleshed out. Through Sam, I understood her complex feelings about Damon, and her questions about “what if?” The flashbacks, exploring what could have happened if she’d made a different choice, and how things might have turned out for them further contextualized their relationship in actual reality in a beautiful way, and made me root for them the second time around.
This was an enjoyable read that pleasantly surprised me. I’d recommend it to readers looking for a contemporary romance that captures the nostalgic vibes of the 2000s.

Read Completed 7/20/24 | 2.75 stars
I was very excited for this book so the fact that I didn't connect is quite the letdown. I loved the 2000s nostalgia, the concept of this magical mix CD, and a second chance romance, but the writing here just really fell flat in a lot of ways.

Firstly, the things I did like. I really liked the concept of taking care of yourself first and fulfilling your dreams, and that some people can be meant to be together but need to find each other at the right time. I really liked that Sam & Damon met up again as adults and they were more mature and therefore better equipped to work on a relationship. I also really liked Sam's relationship with her grandma. For some reason I'm just a sucker for a cute grandparent relationship. The 2000s nostalgia was also fun, albeit overdone.

Sadly, I had a lot of issues with a lot of things, though, and that really overshadowed my reading experience. First and foremost, while Sam & Damon matured as they grew to be adults, most of Sam's growth within the timeline of the story was ONLY because of this magical CD. She gains perspective on why her mother left and never came back, but she doesn't ever really talk to her mom or grandmother about it until the very end, and it's very quick and not developed. She's only able to have this perspective because the CD shows her what her and Damon's relationship would have been like if she stayed and she kind of understands now why her mother had to leave. But I really, really wish that had been developed more and she could have come to a better realization, like on her own and the CD just helps. It basically hands it to her and she had to be slapped in the face with it.

I also had issues with the romance. I really didn't feel a lot of chemistry between Sam & Damon. I felt like both of them were kind of boring characters and I didn't really feel their personalities. Honestly, MOST of the plot takes place through the flashbacks and obviously there's some in the present as well, but there's not a lot of communication, flirting, dancing back and forth, working things out. The characters were pretty boring and relying on their teenage selves to tell most of the story didn't really tell me who they are as adults.

This also isn't really a romcom. The concept leads to believe it's going to be a 13 Going on 30 type vibe, or some other cute romcom movie, and the cartoon cover also implies romcom, but the book is fairly even-keeled with maybe 2-3 funny moments that might make you chuckle, mostly relating to silly 2000s trends, but it's kind of serious in a lot of ways. I'm not saying the author should have written it differently but I do feel like the marketing leads you to believe this is a little lighter than it is. It's not super heavy but I kind of felt dragged down the whole time.

I also felt like the parts that were lighter were too cheesy. The 2000s vibe was a little too overdone -- I don't need to know that a character was wearing Soffie shorts that were rolled three times. The mention of the clothing styles, trends, decor, and music was a little much. Sure, a lot of us looked like that in the 2000s and had all that crap in the 2000s, but it just felt like it was trying too hard. Some cute mentions are great, but it was all the time to make sure you really, really got the picture. The ending was SO CHEESY that it made me embarrassed for the characters and I really hated it. I also had really stupid things that I wanted to pick apart (like Damon's gonna go sell his beer internationally when he doesn't even sell nationally yet? -- At least, I'm assuming. There's no mention of his reach and his success outside of this small town. And do you know how wildly expensive it is to import beer? And can they even keep up with production? This is like, a small hometown local brewery. I hated the nickname "Sam Sam". I hated that Sam called her past self "Alt-Sam". Enough, just call her me or Sam. It's stupid, but things like that got on my nerves.)

THE BACKTRACK had some really good bones but the writing really left me wanting more. I just didn't connect with the characters and I feel like there was no plot because the backstory did all the hard work. Maybe Erin LaRosa just isn't for me. I've DNFed another one of her books and this was the second one I tried. I mostly felt like the scenes in the past took up way too much of the book and we never got to feel the characters as adults. Why were they so meant to be? Being best friends and having a missed opportunity as a teenager doesn't mean you're meant to be. We didn't really see much of them as adults and I just felt like the author wanted us to just know instead of really displaying how much chemistry they really had.

Cute Concept. Giving 13 going on 30 but I just could not get into it. It was taking me days to get through a chapter. It was just not keeping my attention.

I really enjoyed this book. Kind of like a reverse 13 Going on 30. This is my favorite book from the author so far.

🖤🖤🖤⚡️
3.5/5


This was an anticipated read for me! This is also the first book I’ve read by Erin La Rosa. Overall, I enjoyed this book & I would give her other books a try. This just might not have been the right story for me. The ending isn’t what I was expecting it to be, but was throughly surprised & happy with how it ended!! So keep reading if you get that feeling during the middle part.

Sam returns to her hometown after many years of for filling her dream traveling as an international pilot. Sam, who’s in her thirties, is set to help her grandma clean out her house & to try to get her to change her mind of moving to assist living. She’s prepared to see her long lost best friend Damon, who she feels she left behind along with their hometown of Tybee all those years ago. What she isn’t prepared for is a (cursed?) CD player that is possibly transporting her to an alternate universe?! Oh, & a surprise visit from someone else of her past…

Things I didn’t really care for in this one…

-Sam was kind of immature for her age! I felt like she was trapped in her teenage self’s body sometimes with how she reacted to situations. For someone that was well traveled & living in an international city of Paris, I would expect her to be a bit more versed in life experience.

-Rachel…so many problems with Rachel, her present day “best” friend. She didn’t feel like a supportive best friend at all. I actually really disliked her reactions to a few things. I felt like maybe their friendship wasn’t built up enough.

Things I did really like about this book…

🎶 the song selection was nostalgic & 👩🏼‍🍳💋

🍻 loved that Damon owned a brewery

✈️ travel bingo

🕰️ the 13 going on 30 vibes

🍦 the ice cream with gummy bears

Overall, this was a cute story! I just prefer deeper romance stories, I believe. It was an easy read & would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick read!!

The Backtrack is a story of Sam who returns home to Tybee Island after being away for many years. She reconnects with her best friend, Damon, which is awkward after a near kiss years ago. She finds an old CD player which holds a mix CD that Damon made her. When she starts it, she is taken to a time of what ifs.

The concept grabbed me for this book. Second chance romance of sorts in a different way while sparks fly in the present as well. Things did happen fast but I really loved Sam going back to see what could have been. I loved that she was rooting for Alt Sam. The characters were wonderful and filled out. I loved Damon as he was so sweet and obviously still held a torch for Sam.

Thank you to NetGalley, Harlequin Trade Publishing, and Erin LaRosa for the e-ARC of this book. This review is my own opinion.

*I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

This was a fun, nostalgic story about a magical CD player, childhood love, and that "What If?" feeling we all have when we wonder about our other potential paths in life. If you're looking for a fun, fast romp, this is a good one and it gets bonus points for all of the references! Former emo kids, this one is for you LOL.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this ARC publication for an honest review.

This book was filled with nostalgia and so much fun to read, but at the same time there was an emotional depth that pulls at your heart, too. I adore best friends' love stories and this one added a magical element to the trope. Sam and Damon were best friends who had a moment in high school that changed the whole trajectory of not only their friendship but their entire future. Almost 20 years later, Sam is called back to her hometown on Tybee Island to help her grandma. The place where she was abandoned by her mother. The place Daman still lives. The place she was adamant about not getting stuck there...

While cleaning out her bedroom, Sam discovers a mix tape Daman had made her and a CD player. Each time she listens to a song she is transported back in time, starting with the moment Daman asked to kiss her...only this time she says YES! This secondary timeline is a whole different life. One where Sam and Daman are together. Talk about sweetness overload! Until the last couple of songs which about did me in...

Sam has a lot to deal with: her reunion with Daman and facing her feelings for him, the glimpses of a life that could have been, the issues of the abandonment of her mom and her return, her relationship with her grandma...

Daman was book boyfriend material no matter which timeline! Sam was so lucky to have him, but I was frustrated that she could be so selfish in the way she handled some things. I understand she had emotional baggage, but she abandoned Daman for all those years knowing what that felt like. Daman was way too easily forgiving, and Sam should have had to work more for it.

I enjoyed the romance but could have done without the spice. The emotions and intimacy were already felt without the open-door scenes. Just my preference...

Everything comes full circle by the end, and we do get a happily ever after even though it seemed too quick from "no, we cannot possibly be together...you live here, I live there, blah, blah, blah..." Then all of a sudden, the light bulb moment to easily make it work!

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC of the backtrack.

I recommend this book. The characters were well thought out and it felt very real.

📚 #BOOKREVIEW 📚
The Backtrack by Erin La Rosa
⭐️⭐️⭐️ / Pages: 313 / Genre: Romcom

Before Sam’s mother abandoned her, she told her not to stay stuck like she did. So Sam relentlessly focused on becoming a pilot and getting out of there. No one would hold her back, including her best friend Damon, who could have easily been so much more. Twenty years later, she’s accomplished her dream of becoming a commercial pilot when she has to go back home to help her grandmother move. While cleaning, she finds her old CD Walkman with a mixed CD that Damon made for her. Every time she plays a song, she gets transported back in time to an alternate reality where she gave in to temptation and she and Damon became a couple. Through these glimpses she gets to see what could have been.

I loved the premise of this story since I’m a total sucker for time travel tropes. The early ‘00s playlist was especially fun. Most of this book was great, but for me, it fell apart at the very end. Suddenly it was all boring mother-daughter drama and the dialog in the last few chapters was seriously so cringy and sappy it was like someone else wrote it.

Thank you, @NetGalley and @HarlequinBooks for my gifted copy.

The vibes were ***everything***. Time travel, second chance, friends to lovers, nostalgic perfection with an ideal balance of throwback vibes and deep feels. It made me crave a trip to Hot Topic with a mix CD in the player.

I feel like this was well done. It wasn’t exactly time travel which I initially thought, but more alternate timeline. Regardless, I feel this was woven together nicely between the alternate timeline and current day.

This did hit me in the nostalgia feels. Based on the timeline, I am the same age as our two main characters so the descriptions of clothing and the music especially (which this book heavily focuses on) hit home for me and “took me back.” It really does get you thinking about the “what-ifs” and how life may have been different if I’d made this choice instead when I was 18.

This one was good the last half but it was very hard to get into. My main takeaway is that I felt like the main characters had little connection, I had so much hope for this one it sounded up my alley but at the end of the day it’s just kind of fine.

3.25/3.50 My favourite part of this book had to be the soundtracks, and I think any emo kid would totally agree. I totally felt connected to the book because of it! The plot was really cool but character relationships fell short in my opinion. Would have loved to see more of the main characters navigating their relationship despite seeing these flashbacks to their alt selves. And of course, we have to all agree that Grandma was the funniest character. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

Erin La Rosa’s The Backtrack was not what I expected but so much more. We follow Sam, a pilot who has not been back to her hometown in a decade, coming back home. Of course! There would be no small town romance without that. Sam’s grandma, Pearl, is selling her house because she’s getting old and is probably moving into a retirement home, but Sam does not want that for her. Sam comes home to help her settle the home however, she runs into her best friend Damon… who she hasn’t spoken to in that same amount of time 💀

In order to understand this, you have to know that Damon confessed his feelings for her someone time during the beginning of their senior year. Sam, being the Type A, must get out of Tybee, type of girl that she was let him down gently. She needed to leave her hometown, she couldn’t stay there and being with Damon meant staying there… right?

Erin puts a spin on a childhood best friends to lovers trope with MAGICAL REALISM AND EMO SONGS.

Sam and Damon are elder emos…. 🥲I felt so old reading this book…. Okay there’s my rant… now onto my feelings

I absolutely adore magical realism and alternate realities. I loved how easy it was to read. Sometimes you don’t need to read about the logistics of things, you just have to let them be. I felt nostalgic reading about Sam and Damon’s past and alternate past. Plus seeing it in the form of emo songs was icing on the cake.

Having something like this would usually not be my cup of tea. I really hate when the real world seeps into what I’m reading. It feels like it dates the book. But maybe it was the fact that I whole heartedly related to loving these songs made my usual ick disappear…. I will say that the final grand gesture was absolutely cringey and not something I truly expected to happen.

All in all, this was definitely a must read for anyone who misses Always by Blink 182!

Lots of 90s and 2000s nostalgia, and I loved the line "seafood boils are like therapy." Thanks, netgalley.

“Having nostalgia is romantic…It’s the ability to never forget something you love.”

This book felt like opening a window to the past as Sam was teleported into hers. Seriously, the 90’s/early 2000’s nostalgia is SO strong in this book and I couldn’t get enough of it! Honestly, Erin’s ability to remember all of the things and the brands is incredibly impressive and it was a fantastic stroll down memory lane for me.

Beyond the nostalgia, this story was absolutely beautiful. I love magical realism and the idea that this CD player that housed a mixed CD from her former best friend for over a decade is the exact item that teleports her into the past to see an alternate reality of her life if she had dated her best friend‽‽ LIKE WHAT‽‽? I honestly am captivated by how Erin came up with this idea, but beyond that, I just loved living through it. I loved reading about Sam’s mental breakdown when she realizes she’s seeing her teenage years play out differently. I loved watching her question things she had once been so sure of as a way to grow internally and expand what she thought she could have in life. And I love watching her reconnect with Damon, her childhood best friend who is just as charming—if not more so—today as he was all those years ago.

Honestly? I think Damon was my favorite character in this story, but I loved all parts of it and highly recommend putting some nostalgia and magic in your life by reading this one!

OH and one of my favorite lessons was in this one too: timing is everything. Sometimes, just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. But it also doesn’t mean we can’t later on.

Read if you like:
- Magical realism
- 90’s/early 2000’s nostalgia
- Friends to lovers
- Childhood best friends
- Second chance romance
- Alternate realities
- Spunky grandmothers

This was a fun nostalgic book! Sam returns back to her home town after a decade away to find her room just as she left it years before, including her CD player. Funny thing though, when she plays the special CD her friend Damon made her back in high school, she is transported back in time to see what could have been. So instead of staying friends, Alt-Sam and Damon kiss and end up dating and each song she gets a glimpse of the good, bad and sometimes hard times. It was sad at times, but that is life. I also appreciated the relationship Sam had with her Grandma who raised her when her mom left. I also liked how the resolution with her mom Bonnie played out. it added to the story line. It made more sense why Sam was the way she was.

I also was pulling out my CDs reminiscing about my high school days.