If you found yourself drawn to Ali Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis but hoped for a narrative rooted in liberal arts academia rather than STEM, look no further. In Given Our History, Clara Fernsby and Theodore (Teddy) Harrison, once best friends, find themselves working together at the same university, forced to reconcile after a falling out. Jumping between the origins of their relationship and their present lives as history professors, the book offers a charming and nostalgic journey. However, while Teddy shines as a love interest, Clara's portrayal may leave something to be desired. While her focused nature is evident, her depth and complexity seem lacking, leaving her character somewhat flat. A cute romance for lovers of history and academia alike!

This book was sweet, in many parts. I enjoyed the dual timeline and getting to know Clara in both timelines.
I just had the hardest time really latching onto this plot. Everything felt so low stakes. What was the main conflict? Getting tenure? Throwing a party.
Sadly it just did not enthrall me.
It also failed to create a setting that I fell in love with.

I read kristyn’s first book and loved it and was so excited to read this one too. i didn’t know if it would live up to her debut but hoooooo boy this one was EVEN BETTER.

kristyn j miller’s superpower is writing books that feel like big hugs. they make you feel safe and warm and tucked into bed all comfy. they make you feel at home.

given our history was so so so beautiful and so comforting. i cried a lot because I just love clara and teddy so much and i just think they deserve the world. their love for each other and how they grew up together and saw each other become real people and their long distance friendship? it all gave me butterflies. i LOVED the side characters and i feel like we truly had the chance to get to know them which i loved!!!!!!!

(reagan or izzy/bel book in the future? maybe?)

i also just wanted to shoutout the fact that SO many iconic things were mentioned. polyvore, myspace, dial up internet, my chemical romance, club penguin? this book really said ✨relatable✨!!!!!

tldr: I loved this book with my whole heart. i will read this again when it comes out and I’ll probably buy the physical copy just so I can write little notes and highlight my favourite lines just like teddy & clara do.

READ THIS BOOK✌🏻🩷

“Love is the hard road. The person you’re meant to be with is whoever you choose to be with. And you’ll have to fight for it and make sacrifices for it every step of the way. You just have to choose someone who’s worth all that trouble, and then you have to keep on choosing them, every day.”

I really loved this book. It was sweet, cozy, and a quick easy romance to get into. Honestly, what I truly loved was the reality of the romance. These two grew up together, fell in love, knew it wouldn’t work multiple times while they worked on pursuing their dreams and inevitably broke each other’s heart just to find them again years later. The dual timelines gave us beautiful perspective shift of our mains growing up and provided the background knowledge we needed. The story was great, and I would definitely recommend if you love:

📖 Friends to Lovers
📖 Second Chance Romance
📖 History Buff
📖 Academia
📖 Dual Timelines (Past & Present)

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for providing the arc for this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!
given our history is a friends to lovers & second chance romance about two history professors, unfolding in two timelines: one in the present and the other starting from when they met at 17. despite my initial excitement for the book, being a big fan of romance in academic settings, it ended up being just an okay read. to me, the characters weren't very charismatic, and i couldn't really understand the reasoning for why they couldn't be together, so i didn't feel any emotional connection to the story.

Given Our History by Kristyn J. Miller
5⭐️
Thank you @netgalley and @stmartinspress for this arc!
Don’t you just love a good friends-to-lovers romance?🤭
Clara Fernsby and Theodore Harrison the Third are history professors (insert failed pun right here)🥲. Clara’s is up for her tenure at her private liberal arts college where she teaches. For the fall semester, they bring in a visiting scholar who so happens to be Theodore.
Clara and Theo have known each other since childhood but have lost touch. Now, they’re working on projects and sharing the same office space as each other which stirs up past feelings.
I ate this book up in one evening! I also loved how they made mixtape for each other when they were younger. ALSO, My Chemical Romance! Be sure to pick up Given Our History on August 27, 2024!

This was such a cute read!

Clara Fernsby meets Teddy Harrison at a camp they both attend as teenagers. Both homeschooled and at camp to maintain socialization. They fall easily into friendship and over the years it doesn’t take long to realize, they may feel more for each other. When they start to think about exploring that, their futures and plans seem to stand in the way.

The story is told in the present with flashbacks to the past and how their relationship started and the events that took place to lead them to the present- where Clara is a history professor at Irving trying to secure a tenure position and Teddy is also there, as a visiting professor from Carnegie.

Clara is a planner and she has a certain direction she is planning for her life to take. Will Teddy being back in the picture and her career not taking exactly the path she planned help her realize that sometimes life will take a different direction, and that’s ok and may even end up better than she could have planned herself.

I appreciate the opportunity to read this ARC and would recommend, especially to any history lovers 😀

This was very cute and very cozy second chance romance that made this a quick and easy read! There are *multiple* timelines.

Absolutely lovely. This was a believable, romantic, and well-developed love story. I was enchanted by each and every character, hope there will be spin-offs for many of them, and can't wait to read more from this author.. well done!!

This was such a cute and special read to me!! I absolutely loved Teddy and Clara’s story and seeing the unique way they cared for each other for so many years. This was just so cozy and I found a lot of comfort with these characters!

I found the friends to lovers and second chance romance in this book really sweet and intriguing to read about. The homeschooling experience and summer camp storyline were very unique to me and I found it so sweet to see the way two people found lots of comfort and love within each other. While there were definitely parts of their story that frustrated me (especially Clara’s reasoning for them not being in a relationship), I actually didn’t mind it too much. Something about that frustration made the characters more realistic to me, and that coupled with the writing made me enjoy it all!

Clara’s character was complicated and I loved it. I really enjoyed exploring how she viewed life, friendship, love, and history. Witnessing her experience as a homeschooled girl who wanted to experience more than she was really resonated with me as well. Altogether it just made me feel for her character. Teddy! Harrington! My goodness did he give me butterflies the entire story!!! I loved the way we got to see him grow up and figure out what he wanted, and how that made him who he is in the present. Just everything he did all the way from when they first met had me kicking and squealing. It was just soooo apparent how much he cared for Clara!

I enjoyed the past and present time jumps, the way Teddy and Clara reconnect in their present life, and the university setting as a whole. I loved seeing their passion for history shine through both their job and relationship. Also, Clara’s sister being a student brought in such a fun element and just elevated the story as a whole. I was LIVING for the millennial references too :) I would have liked to explore Clara and Izzy’s relationship a little more (as I found it really interesting) as well as Clara and Reagan’s, as I was just so curious about Reagan as a character in general. Just more from these characters would have been amazing!

Overall, I really enjoyed this story, both Teddy and Clara’s characters, the dynamics explored within their friendships and families, and the way the story explores academia and chasing after your goals. I frequently find myself rereading bits of this story because it just brings a smile to my face and the comfiest feeling!!

5⭐️ 1🌶️

This was the perfect, feel-good, dual timeline, second chance romance. I LOVED this! The perfect cozy fall book.

I was beginning to get tired of second chance/dual timeline books, but I’m so glad I read this. Teddy and Clara have such great chemistry. I think my favorite part of it all was that it just felt so believable. There wasn’t just some horrible miscommunication trope. It wasn’t overly dramatic or childish. It truly felt like two people who loved each other deeply but needed to grow up individually before being able to be together in earnest. Right person, wrong time.

The author wrote it in such a way that I felt like I was living through it. The scenery of a college campus was done so well. The dual timeline was executed perfectly in my opinion. It didn’t feel like it was dragging out the past and trying to be dramatic in the way that other dual timeline books do.

I have no notes. This was so cute. Quick, easy, fun, and enjoyable read!! Thank you NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for this eARC!

3.5 ⭐️ a cute and cozy second chance romance with a whole lot of friends to lovers. I did enjoy the past and present chapters but sometimes the jumps from past to present weren’t seamless. & listen I’m all for a good miscommunication moment but Clara’s reasoning for her and Teddy not being together seemed silly.

I did enjoy the academic setting of the book & location! All the extreme millennial references were SO REAL & gave me so much nostalgia I loved it!

This book was a very different and fun take on a second-chance romance and a friends-to-lovers romance; one that I thoroughly enjoyed. Clara and Teddy became friends as teenagers and quickly grew to be best friends. After a falling out post college, they spend years not speaking to each other before Teddy becomes a visiting professor at the college where Clara teaches. The two reunite, rebuild their long-lost friendship, and finally decide to commit to the feelings they’ve had since they were teens.

I am hesitant to fully call this book second-chance romance since Clara and Teddy were really friends with feelings rather than a couple, but it reads as one despite that technicality. This book uses flashbacks to create a dual timeline effect of things playing out both in the past and in the present, which is one of my absolute favorite tropes. This works quite well here, though there were times I wish the timelines had lined up a bit more perfectly (though these were few and far between considering the number of places in which they lined up quite well).

Clara and Teddy are great main characters, owning up to their own shortcomings readily in a way that felt very human. Clara is so relatably awkward in her initial interactions with Teddy after years apart, and even for a while after that.

Overall, this book was entertaining, binge-able, and utterly likable.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC!

A great second-chance love story. The plot is a little slow at times between the past/present narrative, but the story is very well-written.

I truly love this sweet story! Clara and Teddy are such a beautiful pair, I loved, watching them, grow up together, becoming lovely, adorable, deeply feeling people. they both become better, more mature versions of themselves, while still keeping their true personalities and feelings for each other throughout their decade of knowing one another. In the same vein as LOVE AND OTHER WORDS characters are deeply lovely, beautiful people, and I just fell completely in love with both of them and their ever-evolving relationship ❤️

thank you for the arc :)

Disclaimer: I received an advanced copy through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review!

If you like friends-to-lovers, second-chance romance, workplace romance, and dual timelines mixed with academia vibes, then you might enjoy Given Our History!

This story follows Clara Fernsby, an assistant history professor at a university, who is asked to share her office for the semester with a visiting scholar—Theodore "Teddy" Harrison. Teddy also happens to be a teen friend she met at a camp for home-schooled children, who seems to be "The one that got away." This story goes back and forth between the past, showing how their friendship began and the blossoming romance between two teens, and now, trying to figure out what happened and to work together professionally despite old feelings resurfacing.

I enjoyed the concept of this story, but it showed me that dual timelines are not for me. I felt that every chapter that focused on the past events of their friendship and blossoming feelings took away from the present. I missed feeling the awkwardness of them seeing each other again, and as the story continued back and forth, I felt that the conflicting emotions between them were lost.

I felt as if the story fell a little flat and was a little dry. I wondered at 60% when it would pick up and learn what happened between them so some conflict would arise...but it did not. I was left feeling that way through the majority of the book.

Overall, I didn't think the story was bad or boring—just a little slow. I know there are people who will eat this up. I enjoyed it, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for the tropes listed above!!

Given Our History is for the friends and lovers! Clara and Teddy have known each other for seventeen years and have been estranged for ten of them. Their life has seen them as friends, to lovers, to strangers again. Despite their rough rekindling, Clara and Teddy defy time and history to create a new beginning.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy of Given Our History. I loved this story and its characters. I cannot wait to have this book on my shelf and I am looking forward to reading more work by Kristyn J. Miller!

Go hug your friends and tell your people you love them!

4.75/5.0
* friends to lovers
* second chance romance

“Fate that our birthdays were a day apart, as though Teddy was born and the universe realized the next day that it had almost forgotten his twin flame.”

Clara and Teddy are both homeschooled and meet over a summer camp as teens. They stay friends for years before having a falling out centered around romance that cost them their friendship. Now, Clara is working on becoming a tenured history faculty member at a small, private, liberal arts college when she’s asked to share an office with a visiting professor… Teddy. Will they be able to overcome their complicated past and give their love another shot?

As a Higher Ed girlie, I am uniquely qualified to tell you this book is AMAZING. I loved Clara’s personal and professional development almost as much as I loved Clara and Teddy’s story. Navigating the politics of higher education is complex and often messy, and Clara’s experience perfectly captured this feeling. Additionally, a university is a great backdrop for any love story! Give me all the cozy fall vibes!

I usually don’t love jumping around timelines but it really worked for this novel, weaving their history into their present interactions. I enjoyed watching their friendship grow into more as the years went on. Teddy and Clara were so easy to love and root for!

I definitely loved this book and will read more by this author! Thank you NetGalley, Kristyn J Miller, and St. Martin’s Press for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Read if you love..
Alternating timelines
Academia
Second chance romance
Cozy fall vibes
References to your favorite middle school emo bands

(review will be posted to socials closer to pub date)

This book was just okay. It’s supposed to be a romance, but I never felt the connection between the main characters. It also bothered me that Clara and Teddy didn’t have any friends. How do you make it to your 30s with your only friends being your camp mates? I know they were homeschooled, but they went to college, grad school, and work, so how did they not make new friends? This really bothered me. If it weren’t for all the flashbacks I never would have believed there was any love. It was an odd story, but it had a happy ending so I gave it three stars.

I was given an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press!

Given Our History is a friends to lovers romance about two history professors, Clara and Teddy who met in homeschool summer camp 17 years ago. There are two timelines, one in the present and one starting when the two of them met. I think that this works well for the story though I'm not the biggest fan of double timeline books.

I give this book a solid 3.5 stars. I wish more of the side characters had been better fleshed out, and the pacing wasn't to my taste, but the main characters are very sweet and I think they have good chemistry.