I had the opportunity to read The In-Between Bookstore, by Edward Underhill, which will be released on January 15, 2025 📚

Thank you NetGalley, Avon, and Harper Voyager for the chance to read this one early!

We follow Darby, a trans man who, after losing his job in New York, decides to travel back home to a small town in Illinois.

He visits the bookstore where he worked in high school and finds his teenage self through time travel. As Darby begins to notice how much his small town has changed and he runs into his former best friend, Michael. Through time travel Darby gets the chance to change his own life for the better.

This was an interesting read filled with self-discovery, self-acceptance, and how the choices we make come to shape us. I wish we could have had a bit more time travel, but also understand that wasn’t necessarily the point! This was different from my usual reads, but I still found it interesting!

As a non-binary, queer person who worked at a book store in high school, this book hit WAY too close to home. I love time travel stories and have spent more time than I should on what I would tell young me, so thing book brought up a lot. What kept it from being great was the miscommunication in the regular timeline between all the adults. It was frustrating. I planned on rating it a 3, but it made me cry, so a 4 it became. The ending will be hit or miss for people, but it felt right for me. So grateful to NetGalley for this arc!

This book simultaneously made me feel joyful and sad while reading, and I did NOT see that coming. I thought I had a clear picture of where the author was going in this book, but I was blindsided and left feeling like each page would shock me. Darby is a trans man living in NYC, when he is suddenly out of a job and unable to pay his rent. After a large fall out with his closest friends, he packs up a cheap rental and goes to Oak Hills, Illinois - his hometown. Back at home, Darby comes face to face with an old best friend whom he hadnt spoken to in decades, and travels to In Between Books, a treasured place in his youth, but when he walks in the door, he discovers…his younger self?
This book featured several queer characters, including Darby as a transgender man, and I felt like these characters were incredibly well written. I loved how real and raw Darby’s relationships were, and I never felt like the book was lagging.

I have a bit of mixed feelings here. One the one hand, I like some of what this book explored: there's trying to navigate your late 20s/early 30s yet feeling like you're somehow behind everyone else; there's finding your own queer identity (especially as it relates to queerness in small towns); there's the variety of queer places and spaces and how they're not all one size fits all. I think the time travel element, too, added a bit of seasoning to the mix, as well.

On the other hand, as whole, this felt pretty disjointed. I recognize some of what the author was trying to do, but it didn't always feel cohesive. That, and not everything felt resolved in a way that either made sense or was satisfying to me. Sometimes it even felt like steps of Darby's thought process weren't completely relayed to the reader, so decisions he made ended up coming out of left field.

I just wanted a bit more. A bit more even pacing and a bit more communication to the reader (I guess?) about what the concrete intent of the book was. Because I can name a few things that might be the central theme(s), but at the end of the book, I couldn't tell you definitively what that was.

I appreciate what this book tried to do, though. And I do like seeing books about queer adults trying to navigate their space or identity. I just this were a bit... neater, I guess.

This story is about Darby, a transgender person now living as a man. It's about Darby's experiences as a young teen trying to understand who they are and how they fit in the world. The magical In-Between Bookstore gives Darby a chance to go back and talk to his younger self and older Darby believes he is there to help young Darby become comfortable with who he is. In the end though, it feels as though this opportunity presented itself to help present Darby resolve the feelings of not belonging that he felt even to the present day.

I've never read a book with a transgender main character before; heck not even a book with a transgender person, period, at least not that I recall. This story touched me greatly. It was near the end that I finally understood the anxiety that is almost persistent in anyone in the LGBTQ community, wondering if they will fit in, if the new person they met will reject who they are. I felt it. That's how good this book is. I am honored to have the chance to read it and I thank the author for writing it.

The story is touching, heartbreaking, endearing and at the end of it I just want to reach out and give Darby (both of them) a big hug of acceptance.

This is the first adult novel by the YA author of Always the Almost and This Day Changes Everything.
The book follows Darby, a trans man approaching his 30th birthday, who's more than a little lost. Losing his job and his New York apartment, he returns to his small hometown to help his mother move out of his childhood home. There, he visits the In-Between Bookstore and is confronted with a younger, closeted version of himself through some unexplained time travel magic. Being home takes Darby on a journey of self-discovery that has him questioning the end of his best friendship with Michael, now a teacher at their old high school. I understand that Darby spent high school processing his gender and dealing with dysphoria, but for adult him to "not remember" the fight that ended it all seems odd. He uses his time in the bookstore to try and learn what happened from Young Darby.
I really enjoyed the time travel/parallel universe piece to this story, but would have liked more explanation as to why Darby was able to step back in time (and just as suddenly couldn't).
Honestly, it was a bit hard to find the love for Darby, who was dismissive of his best friend in high school and flat-out ignored his New York friends for the whole book after one made a negative remark about him returning home. I guess it gave him lots of room to grow. And he does. Ultimately, the story deals with owning up to your past, the choices you make, and the paths you take.
The In-Between Bookstore will be released Jan 14, 2025.

I picked up this book as an ARC on NetGalley. Thank you so much for letting me read this book.

I all in in all loved it. It is the first Magical Realism book I have read in a long time and was so happy I picked it up. Darby is a trans man who due to a bit of a crisis around his 30th birthday goes home to help his mother with her move out of their family home to a new condo.

While he is home he finds himself traveling back in time to a time in his teenage life when he wrestles with his identity. He still isn't that comfortable in his own skin but this weird bit of paranormal allows him to go back and come to terms with the choices he made in his life. Sure I would have loved for the ending to be a smidge different but I thought the ending was perfect.

All in all, it is sweet, wistful and wonderful little book. Can't wait for it's release.

◇ Synopsis
The In-Between Bookstore follows Darby, a trans man nearing thirty who, after losing his job in New York, returns to his Illinois hometown. There, he revisits the bookstore where he worked in high school and slips through time to meet his teenage, pre-transition self. As Darby navigates a changed town and a strained relationship with his old friend Michael, he gets a chance to alter his present by reconnecting with his past. This novel explores love, self-discovery, and the choices that shape our lives.
◇ Thoughts
I didn't realize from the synopsis that The In-Between Bookstore is a personal story about coming out as trans and accepting choices. The parallel time travel was fascinating without getting bogged down in science, adding to the story's fantasy. However, other characters felt underdeveloped. After getting laid off and losing his apartment, Darby returns to his hometown, disconnecting from his New York friends, which made it hard to understand his connection to the city.
In his hometown, Darby reconnects with his childhood friend and meets queer people who stayed behind, facing a dilemma of whether to stay or return to New York. His growth felt lacking, making his final choices surprising and unexplained. Despite this, the personal journey and fantasy of time travel were intriguing. The time travel element, where he meets his old self in the bookstore, felt underused and didn’t significantly impact the story. I wanted to see more of the time travel aspect and interactions with younger characters. Still, I appreciated the realistic and earned ending.
Thank you to Netgalley for providing an ARC of this book!

I was hopeful that this would be a 5 star read, and I did enjoy a lot of elements, but I've ended up with such mixed feelings.

My main issue is that I just can't make sense of what the book was aiming to do, exactly. There's so many incongruences in what the main character wants and is striving for. At the start of the book, he travels back to his hometown from New York after getting laid off and losing his appartment. He leaves his friends behind and goes pretty much no contact with them for the duration of his stay home. This immediately means we don't see what his connection with New York truly is.

In his hometown, he reconnects with his childhood best friend and gets to meet a lot of queer people who've stayed behind in this small town instead of leaving like he did as a teen. Now, he has to figure out if he wants to stay in this small town, or go back to New York.

This is an understandable dilemma, except I never felt like the main character was really thinking about anything and growing in any way, shape or form. By the end of the book, I was surprised at the choices he makes, because we just never get any depth into why he'd want to make this choice.

There's also a time travel element, with the main character travelling back in time in the bookstore where he worked as a teen, and meeting his old self. I thought this element was incredibly underused, and I didn't feel like it had all that much impact on either the main character or the story.

I was a little taken aback by the ending, because I'd expected this to be a romance novel. I think that's because it's published by Avon, but I did check and saw it isn't being marketed as a romance, so that's on me for assuming! I just wanted to mention it in case you're making the same assumption.

There was a lot I liked about this book but also a lot I didn’t love. I wanted more time in the bookstore. The romance feels unnecessary and wasn’t what I was expecting. Darby’s decision to return to New York made sense but I didnt feel like we really got the reasons why he decided it from the book. It felt abrupt. In fact many of the plot lines felt abrupt and at the same time the story felt strangely slow.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC for review.

I really liked this. I didn't read the synopsis closely and didn't realize it's a very personal story about coming out as trans and accepting choices. The parallel time travel was fascinating without getting bogged down in science, adding to the fantasy of the story. I really liked how the story ended (no spoilers) because it felt real and earned.

I would recommend this to anyone struggling with identity, and who appreciates some magic in their life.

The In-Between Bookstore is a lovely fiction read about love and self discovery. This was a good book and I definitely recommend it.

"I feel like some sort of dam has finally broken--one that's been cracking for years--and the flood is driving me forward."

Having recently been fired just before his thirtieth birthday, Darby runs from his life and friends in NYC to return home to the small town of Oak Falls, Illinois. Upon returning home, Darby visits the local bookstore, In Between Books, where he finds his pre-transition, teenage self working behind the counter. As he reconnects with the people of his past, most notably his ex-best friend, Michael, Darby struggles to overcome the harsh feelings that come with growing up closeted in a small town. Can he change the events of his past that led to his present? Or will his efforts simply cause more pain?

This book is an intriguing work of fiction featuring LGBTQ+ characters and relationships mixed with a tiny bit of fantasy. I loved seeing Darby navigate the relationships of his past and discover the new communities of his old hometown. However, I felt like the writing style was often a little choppy and I was underwhelmed by the ending. I really do love how many different identities, relationships, and struggles were included in this book, and I would love to see more like this in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley, Avon and Harper Voyager, and Edward Underhill for this ARC in exchange for my honest review. Stay tuned for the release of The In-Between Bookstore on January 13, 2025.

I loved this book, even though it was surprisingly melancholy at the end. Hopeful, but wistful. I love Underhill's other books, so I was excited for this ARC. It is a second chance romance featuring time travel and a bookstore which was enough to entice me. But what actually captivated me was how well it spoke to the experience of growing up queer in a small town and not knowing how to reconcile how homesick you can be for it after leaving, with how much you never felt you belonged there, no matter how much you ever wanted to. Leaving somewhere because it felt suffocating, and then missing it anyway. I'm way in my feelings after finishing this, more than I thought I would be, but I'm happy anyway.

Thank you to the publisher for my arc!


AHHHH.. this book gave me really high expectations but the ending just didn't give me that satisfactory bow to tie the entire story together. I loved this story and following Darby as he was just trying to figure out who he is and what he wants in life and seeing him navigate being trans and what happened with Michael was so heartwarming to read. I just had really high expectations for the ending but it still tied the story together really well.