⭐⭐⭐.5/5 - As always, I enjoy a woman in a STEM romance novel, and I enjoyed Given Our History!! With main characters that make you want to shake them a little and a love that spans over a decade of missed chances, readers will love Clara and Teddy's story!

THOUGHTS:
- The main characters have A LOT of the miscommunication/stubbornness trope that they have to get through.
- Alternating timeline between our main couple's past and present.
- Love a romance centered in academia.

**Thank you to St. Martin's Press & NetGalley for the advanced reader copy. I received this book for free, but all thoughts are my own. – SLR 🖤

4.5/5 I am so glad I picked this up! It was charming and sweet, set in alternating timelines as two characters become friends as teenagers and reconnect later in their early thirties.

Not going to lie, the cover did catch my eye first.

As a history teacher, I loved the fact the two main characters were history professors and their love of history was a major part of their budding friendship.

The main tropes of this book are friends-to-lovers and second-chance romance and it does them very well!

Despite the author not fully understanding how tenure works for humanities disciplines (a history PhD doing her tenure review before her 30th birthday? In this millenium? I don't think so!) this is a sweet romance novel about how deeply affecting the romances of our youth can be. A sweet, breezy read perfect for back-to-school vibes.

Clara and Teddy have been best friends since they were children, but they've fallen out of touch due to choices they had to make along the way. Now, they're both university professors, trying to figure out if they want tenure or where they want to be. They end up at the same school and are cajoled into sharing an office. Will their deep-running connection be enough to overcome their fraught history?

Clara and Teddy felt so familiar and tender, I was immediately taken in with their best friends to lovers to strangers to lovers journey. The flashbacks were the perfect foundation so that we understood their friendship and how they got to where they are in the present. It was a slow burn with the sweetest payoff, I really enjoyed this book!

I’m all for ambition and drive but I’m a sucker for love!! I’m always rooting for them to give up or put their dreams aside for love (in books only) but at the same time I’m like no man should come first! But this book makes my heart so happy!

I enjoyed this so so much! First book by this author and it was perfect for my autumn-taste vibe. A cute, academic-type romance/workplace that made my heart so happy!

The best way I can describe this book is “cozy.” It was an entertaining read, with lovable characters, and a sweet romance.

I’m not usually a huge fan of second chance romance, but I thought the flashbacks fit really perfectly with the present day narrative. It was adorable to watch the two grow up together. I felt like their love was really unique and refreshing in that it was more of a steady love.

Clara’s storyline was really spot on with the way that women are often treated in academia. There were many aspects of the novel like the sexism that added to the romance storyline and made it more than just a romance.

This was my first novel by this author, and I cannot wait to read more!

Clara Fernsby and Teddy Hawthorne are reunited after a falling out 10 years ago when Teddy is a visiting professor at the same university Clara teaches at. Clara and Teddy first met at the sleep-away camp for homeschooled kids when they were both 14, and had been best friends until they had that falling out. Told in dual timelines, the reader gets to see Clara and Teddy's relationship evolve at they grew older and learn what inevitability led to their falling out while getting to see the pair get a second chance at romance.

I absolutely loved Given Our History, and this may be my favorite romance I've read this year. I absolutely loved the dual timeline aspect that was present in this book. It really helped the reader gain a better understanding of the motivations behind Clara and Teddy that made it easier to understand why they did have a big fall out all those years ago. Clara and Teddy felt so fleshed out, and the timeline of their entire relationship just felt so realistic.

I absolutely loved Given Our History, and can't wait to check out more from this author in the future.

Thank you netgalley for this ARC opportunity. To start I LOVE a friends to lovers story. It always seems much more reasonable to me as a reader. And this was no exception, the story was cute, you were rooting for them as a reader. And it was exactly what I want out of one of these cute books. Loved it

So, this book was a 3.5/5 star read for me. It was good and I enjoyed it. Some parts absolutely flew by! This was a dual timeline, second chance, friends-to-lovers romance. All tropes that I love! However, some parts just moved way too slowly for my taste. It is a slow burn, and if I'm being honest it's TOO slow. There really isn't any romance until the last 70ish percent. And then there is so much miscommunication between our main character and her love interest that it just starts to get interesting and then starts falling flat again. I didn't hate it, and just because I didn't like it doesn't mean that someone else couldn't love it, but I'm not sure that I would recommend it to anyone.

5 ⭐️!!!
3 🌶️

There are not enough words in the English language, let alone any language, that could ever describe how much I absolutely LOVED this book. I had to force myself to take several days to read it and savor each page even though I wanted to devour this book as quickly as possible.

From the beginning of this book, I had immediate connections with the main characters. They felt very three-dimensional and I loved that each had their own quirks that followed them throughout the years. Through the duration of this book, I enjoyed the development that these characters underwent both together as friends, as a couple, and individually.

The number one trope that I am a sucker for is second-chance friends-to-lovers. Two of my favorite books are People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry and Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren. Whatever kind of magic those two books are composed of, Given Our History was hit with the same exact dose. Reading this book felt like a warm hug; it was nostalgic and brimmed with such longing that I felt all of the emotions that the characters did.

One of the things that I especially loved about this book was the dual timeline. I love when there is an event that has happened in a book that has broken up a pair of characters but the reason isn’t revealed to readers until later in the book. There was a certain scene in this book that I will keep a secret for the sake of dramatic effect for future readers, that literally had me sitting straight up and gasping at my Kindle.

My favorite quote from this book was: “Falling in love was like falling asleep on a long drive: you let yourself get comfortable and then suddenly you wake up and you’re already there. Falling out of love, in contrast, was like a car crash: you slam on the brakes, but you don’t just stop, because the momentum is still there. And years later, you might’ve recovered, but you still have the little aches and pains, and maybe you’re a little scared every time you hop back behind the wheel, because look what happened before.”

I will definitely be purchasing this book as soon as it releases, and will be recommending it to customers/followers. I am so excited for it to have a place it can call its home on my bookshelf. This novel will go down in my book journal as one of my favorites of this year, and quite possibly of all time.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Kristyn J. Miller, and St. Martin’s Press for the chance to enjoy this advanced reader copy of Given Our History.

I will say, the singular thing that I did not enjoy about this book was that it looks like Teddy’s head is on backwards in the cover. However, that is easy to look past in the grand scheme of how incredible this piece was.

Content Warnings: sexual content, death of a parent (mentioned)

My review will be run immediately on Goodreads and StoryGraph and will be posted on my Instagram account (@graciesbooknook) tomorrow 3/27/2024.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Given Our History is the story of two history professors, Teddy and Clara, and their second chance at romance. Childhood friends, who never stopped loving each other, find their way back to each other later in life when Teddy works with Clara for one semester. It’s no longer the right person and the wrong time, it’s finally the right person and the right time. A charming story with very little spice 🌶️, a heartwarming read.

Thank you Net Galley for the ARC!

Academia, history, romance… Given Our History is a friends to lovers AND. Second-chance romance. Clara and Teddy were camp friends long ago, but now are thrown together as colleagues - will their connection and history repeat itself?
This was a cozy and feel good read that I really enjoyed!

Really cute read about two professors that were best friends with the possibility for more as teens. Life got in the way before being thrown together as adults. Theres funny moments, the typical “I still have feelings” moments, and you can’t help but cheer on the idea of the two finally being able to make things work. Great if you like an easy Rom-Com type book!

I'd give this book 3.5 stars. This book is about two college history professors who were both homeschooled in different parts of the country and met when they were teenagers. The protaganist, Clara, is wary of ever having any significant other influence any career path that she might like to take. She met her off and on best friend/romantic interest at a homeschool camp when Teddy was painfully shy and didn't really have friends. The story alternates between the present day and the past where we are given glimpses into how these characters came to be. It was entertaining enough where I finished it in 2-3 days, but I was left wanting a bit more from our main character. I wanted to step in and have a chat with her. It is an easy to read romance novel.

I received this ARC from NetGalley and MacMillan Publishers for my honest opinion. Thank you.

This is a cute Right Person Wrong Time romance following Clara and Teddy who were best friends as teenagers but when attempting to be more, life got in their way. The reader gets two timelines - Clara and Teddy as teenagers, and then both as late-20s professors thrown together by chance and department heads at the university.

Honestly I finished this last night and I had to go look up the character's names again - I can't promise anything about this book will be left in my memory in seven days. The romance was sweet, but shallow, as was the character development. I've seen a lot said about the fall-vibes of this book, but those were also lacking.

Overall, it's not a book I feel like I wasted my time reading, but it won't be one I'm shouting from the rooftops about.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the free ARC copy in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you to St Martin’s Press for sending me an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This book was perfectly okay, in the best way possible.

There was not anything necessarily wrong with it or off-putting such as the writing style or characters, but it was just missing a little “wow” factor for me personally!

I found the characters to be quite enjoyable, liked the plot, and had no qualms with the writing so this book gets 3 stars!

Again, there was nothing bad or wrong but something that I cannot quite place just fell a little short for me. If you love Ali Hazelwood or books generally set in academia, I think this will be right up your alley :)

I wasn’t sure I was going to like this when I first picked it up. I’m not a mood reader, but I really didn’t feel in the mood. I put it aside and picked it up two days later, and then I didn’t want to put it down.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the history behind Clara and Teddy, and getting to learn both parts of their story as it was slowly revealed. I loved Teddy’s patience and Clara’s passion, and how the two of them fell in love and overcame their differences and their troubles so they could love each other as they were meant to.

I’m sad the story ended, because I really felt connected to the two of them and would have happily read a while longer, looking into their future instead of just their past.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

NetGalley ARC Review✨

Thank you to @netgalley and @kristynjmiller for an ARC copy of Given Our History in exchange for my honest review.

Clara and Theodore meet at summer camp and became fast friends. Clara is driven and wants nothing more than to be a tenured history professor. She shares her love of history with Theodore and he also becomes a history teacher.

After years of a long distance friendship, their lives become separate after Theodore reveals his feelings. When a new, guest teacher is brought to Clara's workplace, she is shocked to find out it's Theodore.

Can they mend their broken friendship? Will Clara move past her rigid timeline to experience love?

This is Kristyn's second novel and it's just as good as her debut

ARC Review. 2.5 stars! - I enjoyed my time reading this romance, although it was not memorable. The first 40% felt slow but the story picked up from there. I didn't feel chemistry between the main characters until much of their backstory was told which wasn't until deep into the story. I did appreciate the exploration of themes of misogyny and ageism in higher education and weighing my personal perspective and experiences working in higher ed with the characters. I especially enjoyed moments between the characters from years past as they were developing their friendship and romantic relationship and exploring the relationship between the main character and her younger sister.