Edward Underhill’s writing speaks so much to the trans experience and every book he writes highlights a different facet of it. This one is all about connecting with your older self, wanting them to know that life gets better, that there’s power in knowing who you are.

I liked this story, though there were parts of it that stuck out to me more than others. The magical realism of the bookstore was gorgeous, but the romance and friendships I found to be lacking. I kept waiting for something to happen, something bigger than what was. The ending was bittersweet and continued the melancholic tone that was woven through the story.

A good story. I just wish there had been a little bit more to it.

The In Between Bookstore by Edward Underhill

Loved reading about a perspective that is different from mine. This book really put me in the shoes of a trans person and opened my eyes to what this would be like.

Darby has just lost his job and is feeling lost in his life in New York, so he decides to head back to his home town. He quickly discovers that his hometown bookstore is some sort of time portal and when he steps through the door he sees himself as a high schooler working at the bookstore… pre-transition. As if that wasn’t enough, he also keeps running into his ex best friend and there seems to be a spark between them? What will Darby decide to do, stay in his home town or return to NYC? And more importantly, will he learn how to accept himself fully?

This book was great and I really enjoyed the story as well as the perspective. It does have a romance aspect, but it is closed door. I especially loved the mother-son relationship in this book too.

There are a lot of things to like about this book. I liked the magical realism, i liked the transgender part and the bookstore. But I definitely felt like this was a romance that did not end up being a romance, which admittedly is not the genre the book is placed for good reason but I still ended up disappointed. So mostly while the resolution made the most sense, it wasn't my favorite.

ve read all of Edward Underhill’s YA novels, so I was very excited to read his first adult novel. And although there wasn’t a lot of action, I found it to be a great character study of Darby and their struggles to find a way to move forward in their life. Darby’s story is very true to the adult experience nowadays, where people can feel very directionless and untethered. I felt for Darby who returns to his hometown and feels disconnected from the people he used to know and the town he used to be familiar with. And his interactions with his younger self were sweet and heartbreaking and made me really wonder what I would say to my younger self. I really loved the journey Darby went through in this story to find himself.

Thank you to HarperCollins and NetGalley for an ARC of this book!

I started reading this but unfortunately I'm struggling to get into it and I'm afraid I'm going to have to mark it as a DNF. The style / voice just isn't gelling with me.

3.5 stars rounded up. This book had a really interesting premise and a bittersweet execution. It didn't fully work for me, but it was engaging and I liked the characters, especially the friend group. It was timely in a sort of depressing way. It's a solid character-centric book if you're in the mood for that.

I read an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All comments are my own.

I've enjoyed this author's previous books, so I was excited for this adult debut! While this is definitely not a romance, it was an enjoyable though provoking read.

I don't think my audience would necessarily get this book but I liked it personally, I wish there would have been a bit better explanation of the time travel but I could accept it as it was.

I really liked the writing in this novel. Very vividly described. While I do love a flawed character I do wish that overall there had been more growth of the characters throughout the story. I do like the plot pacing being quite fast. I did hate the ending though. I didn’t like that he was still lying it felt like he hadn’t learned anything.

I've been a fan of Edward Underhill since reading his debut novel ALWAYS THE ALMOST. He creates such wonderfully nuanced characters who feel fully realized and so easy to connect to, regardless of where they are or how they are struggling. Like his other novels, THE IN-BETWEEN BOOKSTORE features wonderful characters and nuanced exploration of identity and self. For me, the "time travel" did not quite fully work. I look forward to reading the author's next book!

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC and the publisher for the gifted physical ARC! This book was published in the US by Avon and Harper Voyager on January 14th, 2025.

Edward Underhill’s The In-Between Bookstore is a heartfelt meditation on queerness, homecoming, and the ghosts of our past selves. It follows Darby, a trans man freshly laid off from his New York City startup job, as he returns to his hometown of Oak Falls to help his mother pack up his childhood home. What begins as an escape from his perceived failures quickly turns surreal when Darby finds himself slipping through time—encountering his pre-transition teenage self working at the local bookstore where he once found refuge.

The novel’s greatest strength is its portrayal of queerness in the American Midwest. Darby arrives in Oak Falls expecting to feel as alienated as he did in his youth, only to find that the town—and the people in it—are more nuanced than he remembered. His former best friend, Michael, who once drifted away from him, is now openly gay and surrounded by a group of queer friends. These revelations force Darby to confront not just his assumptions about Oak Falls but also the ways his younger self internalized its limitations.

The time-travel element adds an emotional depth to Darby’s journey. Watching teenage Darby interact with teenage Michael, not yet aware of the fracture that will come between them, makes their estrangement even more poignant. The novel delicately explores how misunderstandings—especially around identity—can wound, as Michael once mistook Darby’s struggles with gender for distaste for his own budding queerness. In revisiting these moments, Darby gains clarity and, ultimately, closure. The book resists the easy narrative of a hometown romance as the answer to Darby’s journey; instead, it allows him to embrace both his past and his chosen future in New York.

While nothing about the novel particularly stood out to me, it was undeniably cozy and compelling in its exploration of self-acceptance. The In-Between Bookstore is a quiet, introspective read—perfect for those who love books that gently untangle identity and belonging through the lens of time, memory, and queer community.

📖 Read this if you love: Cozy, introspective queer fiction, time-travel narratives, and stories of self-discovery; and small-town dynamics and nuanced portrayals of queerness in rural settings.

🔑 Key Themes: Queerness in the Midwest, Self-Acceptance and Identity, Time Travel and Memory, Love and Friendship, Healing from the Past.

Content / Trigger Warnings: Drug Use (minor), Sexual Content (minor).

Thank you so much to Avon for the complimentary copy of this!

This book is out now!

I read Edward's debut back in 2023 and really liked his writing. After reading this one, I now want to go back and read Everything Has Changed before his next book comes out.

I'll be honest I was a little apprehensive starting this because I had seen mixed reviews and I really don't know why. I thought this was really enjoyable! I was invested pretty much right from the start. Darby is at this crossroad in their life where he is about to turn 30 with no job, no love interests and in an apt that is small & costly (yay New York). So what does one do when they just want to reset their life - go back home to Oak Falls, IL. Luckily for Darby, using the excuse to help his mom back up his childhood home was the perfect excuse. What he didn't expect was running into his former best friend whom he did not know was still in the area. Darby isn't sure if New York City is still for him but also not sure if being in Oak Falls is where he should be either.

I thought Edward did such a great job with creating this backstory for Darby in New York. We got to meet his friends and see how they interacted with one another. And how he truly has this group of people in New York that has become his family. As much as Michael tried to include Darby in with his life and into his world with former classmates, Darby just felt so out of place. I think between the house party and the football game, I had this sinking feeling that IL was not for Darby.

As someone who is edging closer to 40, I could still relate to Darby's feeling of not being one way or another. And even though they may have been secure with themselves, there were still aspects of his life where he thought he would be further along in. The incorporation of the bookstore and seeing himself as a teenager has to be SO trippy! Especially when he was still a female, before he even realized that he was trans. I love Darby's relationship with his mom. She was so supportive and sweet. I found myself chuckling a few times at their dynamic.

"Don't assume you're too much or too weird or too new. I know not everybody is safe, but...but sometimes it's worth taking the risk. You'll know when it's worth taking the risk, and then...And then you have to, because the only alternative is to be alone, and that's so much worse."


I was advised early on that this book was not a romance but that didn't stop me from rooting for Darby and Michael to be a thing. I loved their relationship and that they were able to reconnect again as adults. I know the miscommunication trope is not well liked but I felt like it does make things a bit more believable. Because humans and even adults have a hard time communicating especially when it comes to feelings. I was glad that they were able to resolve their tension and Darby was able to get closure on what had happened.

We don't get any reason as to why the bookstore is magical or if Darby's interference causes any sort of ripple effect. I was okay with that because there were just so many other things happening. I am more curious if this occurs to anyone else in the town at their prior work place.

Overall I just really enjoyed this and recommend this if you are looking for something light but with a lot of heart.

A beautiful exploration of identity and self, The In-Between Bookstore had all of the elements for a 5 star book, but just didn’t fully deliver on the “travel” aspect.

This is a sweet and romantic story that is NOT a romance! Darby is feeling over living in NYC. He's been laid off, he has to move out of his studio because the rent is too high, and he's about to turn 30. So he bails on all of his friends to help his mom move out of his childhood home and to visit the bookstore where he worked as a teen. What he finds in small town Illinois is that there are queer people there and that the bookstore is a portal to his high school age self. Throughout the story, Darby gets a chance to help his younger self avoid some real pain, reconnect with his high school best friend (he's queer now!), get closer with his mom, and decide what he really wants his life to be. I was honestly shocked that this book didn't end as a romance because it feels set up for that, but I also wasn't disappointed by the ending. This is a great read when you are feeling a little lost and want to feel like that's okay. Drink this book: grab a grocery story bottle of pinot grigio and drink it on a porch or in a park while you read.

Darby returns to his small home town after losing his job and faces with the rising rates of rent in New York City. When he stumbles into the local bookstore he used to work at as a teen, and finds his younger self, he’s forced to confront old choices, lost moments, and who he’s become now.

I liked this liminal bookstore where Darby interacts with himself before he’s come to terms with his identity. It really brings to mind those “what would you tell your younger self” posts on social media, and we get to see Darby give his younger self what he needed.

But almost nothing else happens in this book. We time travel to Darby’s past, where he can’t figure out if he’s supposed to change anything or even if he can, and a blossoming romance and rebuilding his lost relationships. It was poignant to see him examine how his life would be different if he made different choices. Good characters, interesting relationships, but so slow with very little that actually happens.

Thanks to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager Publishing!

Thank you Avon Books for the ARC!

I soft-DNFed this about 40% in. I normally love mystical time-travelesque stories but this is one of those times where the execution doesn’t quite do the concept justice. I want to give it another chance at some point because it does have good trans/queer representation so I’d like to see how the story pans out.

The In-Between Bookstore by Edward Underhill
⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

I really loved the premise of this book. I loved the message of trust, found family and friendships, self-exploration and self-identity, and love.
I could feel Darby's struggles with learning who he was and accepting that being trans did not make him a broken weird-o. I could feel his fear to let anyone get too close to avoid rejection.

Overall I did enjoy the story, but I don't think the time-traveling bookstore element was needed, or at least not utilized in the way I think it should have been. I think had Darby been able to witness his mistakes with Michael and use them to improve his relationship in present-day it may have been different, but his returning to the past never felt fruitful in that we never saw any kind of resolutions.

With that being said, I think the message and story is still an important one to be shared and I appreciate Edward Underhill for telling it.

Thank you NetGalley, Avon and Harper Voyager, and Edward Underhill for the ARC.
All opinions expressed in this review are mine and have not been influenced by anyone or anything.

Many of us have blips in our timelines that we desperately want to fix, but given that time travel isn't yet possible, we remain stuck in our minds, dwelling on what could have been if we'd wandered down a different path. In "The In-Between Bookstore" Edward Underhill examines this very thing; the idea that any time we make a decision, there is an alternate version of us that made a different decision, and because of that the timeline then split off into another branch. For Darby, this phenomenon happens right as he returns home to Illinois and walks into In Between Books, where he's faced with the teenage version of himself when the bookstore is suddenly a portal to his past.

But can adult Darby convince the teenage version of himself to do things differently so that the painful present he lives in might become better? Or will Darby find out that much of his past is doomed to repeat itself no matter what he does?

Edward Underhill's debut adult novel was full of ups and downs, as there is in real life, but I did find myself feeling as though not a lot actually happened during the course of the book. I was left feeling a little unsatisfied with the ending, wanting more to happen for Darby over the course of the novel, and yet the ending felt a little lackluster. I do feel that I've enjoyed Underhill's YA novels more, but this one had promise that just felt like it fell a little flat in the end.

The In-Between Bookstore is an introspective yet lighthearted novel about rectifying the decisions your younger self has made for you.

Darby, a soon-to-be-thirty, recently jobless, trans man struggling to make ends meet in NYC, is clearly in the midst of having his quarter-life crisis. Through a Wizard Of Oz-esque journey back to his midwestern hometown he evolves over the book’s three week span from an abrasive but lovable twenty-something into a very nearly self-actualized adult. The story is quick paced and LGBTQIA+ insightful with well developed, endearing characters. Definitely an exceptionally relatable read for ANYONE who is struggling, or has struggled, coming to terms with their post-teen years. Very recommended!

Much appreciation goes out to author, Edward Underhill, and Avon Books (HarperCollins) for the opportunity to experience The In-Between Bookstore in advance of its January, 14th 2025 release.

If you could visit your younger self, would you? Darby doesn't really have that choice but it happens anyway. Torn between wondering went wrong with his best friend and dealing with the emotions and struggles of an almost 30 year old, whose whole life seems on hold, Darby is a relatable main character. Some of the big questions here is "what is home", "who am I (especially in relation to the past, present, future)" and "how do you make decisions when you're stuck?" I loved that Darby, as a trans man, thinks and wrestles with these questions and that I found so much to relate to (as a 47 year old cis woman). So read this book......well done.