The Me I Used to Be by Kristan Higgins

The Me I Used to Be by Kristan Higgins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Back in senior year, Audrey, Micah, Jasmine, and Beck were the Core Four: the lucky one, the beautiful one, the smart one, the sporty one. They had color-coded dreams, inside jokes, and a lifelong friendship they thought would last forever. But graduation night ended in a tragic accident, followed by the kind of silence that stretches for decades.

Now, they’ve returned for their reunion, each carrying a life that looks nothing like the glossy future they imagined. There are stalled careers, complicated marriages, outspoken adult children, and secrets that never fit into holiday cards. For one of them, a diagnosis of early-onset dementia turns the weekend into a ticking clock.

Across one unforgettable weekend, the Core Four must decide if their past can still change their future together.
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I have been a huge fan of Kristan Higgins's books since back in the Gideon's Cove and Blue Heron days, and she has long been one of my auto-buy authors. Therefore, when given the chance to read her newest novel months before its publication date, I jumped at the chance and placed my entire TBR list off to the side so I could devour it this afternoon. Higgins was once an author who gave us swoon-worthy men and strong FMCs in her series contemporary romances (always with the important canine sidekick thrown in), and they were always fun to read. However, over the last decade or so, her novels have become fuller and deeper, and while they are still romances at their core (and those canine companions are still a part of every story), they have a complexity that was not evident in those earlier stories.

The tone of Higgins' latest offering reminds me a little bit of her 2021 title PACK UP THE MOON, possibly because I recently reread it in audiobook form, in that it has as a central theme a scary medical diagnosis and revolves around its effects on a family/found family (one of my favorite tropes) group. Told through multiple timelines and multiple viewpoints, it traces the story of four friends as they experience first a tragedy in high school, then it's ramifications throughout their early adulthoods, and finally a resolution that is unlike anything they ever could have expected. This grabbed me from the first chapter, and I read it straight through in a very satisfying binge reading session, which is actually the way I read most of Higgins's books, now that I think of it. I am so thrilled that this author has a new book being launched out into the world, and I hope there will be many more where this one came from.

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Once and Again by Rebecca Serle

Once and Again by Rebecca Serle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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The women of the Novak family were each born with a gift: they can, just once, turn back time.

Lauren has known since she was fifteen that her mother Marcella saved Lauren’s father from a deadly car accident. Dave is alive and happy, and out on the Malibu waves. But ever since, Marcella, her power spent, has lived in fear of what she won’t be able to reverse. Her own mother, Sylvia, is her polar opposite: a free-spirited iconoclast with a glamorous past she only hints at. Lauren has spent her life between these two role models—and waiting for her own catastrophe to strike.

Then one summer, Lauren’s husband takes a job in New York and she moves back to Broad Beach Road, back into her childhood home on the shores of Malibu. Lauren looks forward to surfing with her dad again and perhaps repairing an unspoken fracture in her relationship with her mother. What she doesn’t expect is for the boy next to door to return home as well: Stone, Lauren’s first love, who broke her heart nearly a decade before.

As Lauren falls into familiar patterns, with her family and, more dangerously, Stone, she finds herself thinking about all the choices, large and small, that have brought her to this moment. And wondering, finally, if one of them should be undone.
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First of all, it's important to know that I am of the opinion that Rebecca Serle can do no wrong. I have never failed to read a book of hers that did not fully entertain me, sometimes ripping my heart out (In Five Years), other times leaving me with a feeling of just straight up satisfaction (Expiration Dates). Therefore, when I was given the opportunity to read one of my most anticipated releases of 2026, I jumped at the chance. While this new offering of Serle's did not leap to the top of my top five list of her works, it was still a solid novel with her trademark light magical realism element and the kind of characters who are easy to come to care for and an engaging storyline that kept me entertained from the first to last page. There were a few unexpected surprises thrown in that kept the plot from becoming predictable, and the HEA that I was expecting to find at the end of the book was different from the one I got. I loved that because it meant that all the assumptions I was making that I "knew where this was going" were wrong, and that is the mark of a good novel, in my opinion. Those who are already fans of Serle's will enjoy this one, and if you like authors like Ashley Poston and Kristy Greenwood, this should appeal to you as well.

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