February 27, 2017
In Eberlen’s debut novel, Tess and Gus first meet in 1997, while traveling in Florence. Both are awaiting the results of their college entrance exams, and both seem to have bright futures: Tess as a writer and Gus as a physician. Gus, however, is awash in grief and guilt following the death of his overbearing older brother, unreasonably blaming himself for the fatal accident. And Tess is about to experience a loss of her own, as her mother’s cancer advances—and Tess’s future grows less certain. Over the course of the next 16 years, as they individually fumble through romantic shortcomings, familial frustrations, and professional setbacks, the two narrowly miss one another several more times; these missed connections, however, are never particularly clever or dramatic and the narrative fails to build a case that the two are, in fact, meant to be together. In the end, Eberlen’s novel is more successful as a chronicle of the way grief and loss shapes young people’s life choices than it is as a romance. Consequently, the denouement lands unconvincingly.