Excerpts-

• From the cover 1
  
  Wednesday, May 1
  
  108 Days Until I Can Leave
  
  Some people are natural storytellers. They know how to set the scene, find the right angle, when to pause for dramatic effect or breeze past inconvenient details.
  
  I wouldn't have become a librarian if I didn't love stories, but I've never been great at telling my own.
  
  If I had a penny for every time I interrupted my own anecdote to debate whether this actually had happened on a Tuesday, or if it had in fact been Thursday, then I'd have at least forty cents, and that's way too big a chunk of my life wasted for way too small of a payout.
  
  Peter, on the other hand, would have zero cents and a rapt audience.
  
  I especially loved the way he told our story, about the day we met.
  
  It was late spring, three years ago. We lived in Richmond at the time, a mere five blocks separating his sleek apartment in a renovated Italianate from my shabby-not-quite-chic version of the same kind of place.
  
  On my way home from work, I detoured through the park, which I never did, but the weather was perfect. And I was wearing a floppy-brimmed hat, which I never had, but Mom mailed it to me the week before, and I felt like I owed it to her to at least try it out. I was reading as I walked-which I'd vowed to stop doing because I'd nearly caused a bike accident doing so weeks earlier-when suddenly, a warm breeze caught the hat's brim. It lifted off my head and swooped over an azalea bush. Right to a tall, handsome blond man's feet.
  
  Peter said this felt like an invitation. Laughed, almost self-deprecatingly, as he added, "I'd never believed in fate before that."
  
  If it was fate, then it's reasonable to assume fate a little bit hates me, because when he bent to retrieve the hat, another gust swept it into the air, and I chased after it right into a trash can.
  
  The metal kind, bolted to the ground.
  
  My hat landed atop a pile of discarded lo mein, the lip of the can smashed into my rib cage, and I did a wheezing pratfall into the grass. Peter described this as "adorably clumsy."
  
  He left out the part where I screamed a string of expletives.
  
  "I fell in love with Daphne the moment I looked up from her hat," he'd say, no mention of the trash-noodles in my hair.
  
  When he asked if I was okay, I said, "Did I kill a bicyclist?"
  
  He thought I'd hit my head. (Nope, just bad at first impressions.)
  
  Over the last three years, Peter dusted off Our Story every chance he got. I was sure he'd work it into both our vows and his wedding reception speech.
  
  But then his bachelor party happened, and everything changed.
  
  The story tipped onto its side. Found a fresh point of view. And in this new telling of it, I was no longer the leading lady, but instead the teensy complication that would forever be used to jazz up their story.
  
  Daphne Vincent, the librarian that Peter plucked out of the trash, nearly married, then dumped the morning after his bachelor party for his "platonic" "best" "friend," Petra Comer.
  
  Then again, when would he even need to tell their story?
  
  Everyone around Peter Collins and Petra Comer knew their history: How they'd met in third grade when forced into alphabetical seating, bonding over a shared love of Pokémon. How, soon after, their mothers became friends while chaperoning an aquarium field trip, with their fathers to follow suit.
  
  For the last quarter of a century, the Collinses and the Comers vacationed together. They celebrated birthdays, ate Christmas brunches, decorated their homes with handmade picture frames from which Peter's and Petra's faces beamed out beneath some iteration of the phrase BEST...

Reviews-

• 

  February 5, 2024
  Bestseller Henry (Happy Place) takes on fake-dating in this equally poignant and charming tale of love after loss. When Daphne Vincent’s fiancé, Peter, leaves her for his best friend, Petra, she’s both devastated and unmoored. Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak, seems to be handling the catastrophe better, but when each receives an invitation to Peter and Petra’s wedding, they’re both knocked off kilter. Together they drunkenly RSVP yes, and Daphne impulsively tells Peter that she and Miles are dating. That lie leads to Daphne and Miles building a real friendship (and developing real chemistry), but Daphne is determined to leave their small Michigan town—and its associations with Peter—behind, even if that also means forfeiting what she might have with Miles. Despite the tropey conceit, it’s the believable conflict rooted in the characters’ backgrounds and an alluring small-town setting on the shore of Lake Michigan that will suck readers in. Henry perfectly balances sorrow and discord with love and humor, and romance fans will appreciate watching the growth of the characters’ relationships and of Daphne as a person. This is a heartwarming take on summer love. Agent: Taylor Haggerty, Root Literary.

• Julia Whelan tells a funny story, much like a Shakespearean comedy is a funny story, of a woman who falls in love with her ex-fiancŽ's new girlfriend's ex-boyfriend. When Daphne's fiancŽ, Peter, realizes he is in love with his formerly platonic best friend, Petra, just days before their wedding, Daphne recognizes she has built her whole life around Peter. Furthermore, she doesn't have any of her own friends. Soon, she's forced to move in with Petra's ex, Miles. Whelan accentuates Daphne's devastation with believable sobs and sniffles. She especially shines in the second half of the story with well-matched voices to likable secondary characters Julia, Starfire, and Harvey. S.S. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
• 

  Starred review from July 1, 2024
  

  Julia Whelan, a frequent narrator of Henry's (Happy Place) novels, returns to narrate her latest, with spectacular results. Opposites attract in this contemporary romance set in small-town Michigan. After Peter decides that he is in love with his best friend, Petra--during his bachelor party as he prepares to marry a different woman--children's librarian Daphne, Peter's now ex-fianc�e, is counting the days until she can leave town and put this all behind her. With Petra replacing her not only in Peter's heart but also in his home, Daphne finds an unconventional place to live: with Petra's now ex-boyfriend, Miles. An alcohol-infused plan to be in a fake relationship to get back at their (now engaged) exes sparks a flame that neither Daphne nor Miles had anticipated. Award-winning Whelan breathes life into Daphne and Miles's story. She skillfully captures secondary characters, adding depth to each; one standout is her portrayal of the deceptively brusque Ashleigh, Daphne's coworker and new friend. Nuances throughout the production, such as the quiet anguish Daphne and Miles feel upon receiving their exes' wedding invitation, further draw listeners into their tale. VERDICT An essential purchase and a must-listen for all contemporary rom-com fans.--Amanda L. S. Murphy

  Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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