Emily has, by all appearances, a perfect life: a townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, two healthy children, and a husband who showers her with attention. But the truth is more complicated: Emily’s marriage is in trouble, her relationship with her parents is fraught, and she is still nursing a heartbreak from long ago. When Emily runs into her high school girlfriend at a cocktail party, that heartbreak comes roaring back. But Gen Hall is no longer the lanky, hungry kid with holes in her shoes who Emily loved in her youth. Instead, Gen is now a famous Olympic athlete with sponsorship deals and a string of high-profile ex-girlfriends.

Emily and Gen circle one another cautiously, drawn together by a magnetic attraction and scarred by their shared history. Once upon a time, Gen knew everything about Emily. And yet, she still abandoned her. Can Emily trust Gen again? Can they forgive each other for the mistakes they made in their past? Should Emily risk her children, her privacy, and the fragile peace she has found to be with a woman she loved long ago?

On one hand, this is a damn good book! On the other hand, be prepared for more husband/family drama than lesbian love drama. If you go into it prepared for this, you will love this book! This is my first Rutkoski book, and now I have to go binge the rest of her books! 4.5⭐

I received an advanced complimentary digital copy of this book from Netgalley. Opinions expressed are my own.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. Emily and Gen are soulmates and it was a privilege to witness their love. This is going onto my best bisexual books list!!

Gosh I really loved this book. I am a huge fan of Marie Rutkoski's other books as well: she has a real knack for writing complicated characters, sometimes, dark, and always interesting. In this novel, Gen and Emily meet as kids, and Emily notices Gen and is kind to her when no one else is. When they are in high school, they meet again, and Gen pursues Emily. The two of them start running together, and Emily encourages Gen to work hard to graduate (even though she missed some time in school because of a custody battle). I love the way Gen and Emily support each other throughout the novel. Not only do they have chemistry, but you can really see how much they care for one another, and how good they can be to and for each other. Of course, young love is intense, and doesn't always last. Gen and Emily break up in college, and Emily goes on to marry a very perfect-seeming guy. The descriptions of Emily's marriage to Jack were the most difficult of the book: he is awful in lots of insidious ways, and it takes her a long time to untangle herself from him. She reunites with Gen, and it's not smooth sailing, but I again appreciate Rutkoski's handling of the very real issues of adulthood, motherhood, and relationships. This is truly a beautiful book. It feels timeless, and I will be rereading it a lot.

Thank you NetGalley for the free digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was a big fan of Rutkoski's last book Big Easy, and I knew I wanted to pick this one up. Unfortunately, this one just didn't appeal to me as much as her last book.

What worked:
** I appreciated the portrayal of the abusive relationship and how sometimes abuse can be sneaky and insidious
** it was easy to understand why Emily kept returning to her marriage early on, and how this contributed to her character arc and the growth she made throughout the book

What didn't quite work for me:
** this one is VERY slow moving
** the miscommunications are extensive and made for a frustrating reading experience at times.
** I would have liked to see Emily's relationship with her children developed a bit more (as well as the characters of her children)

I think I might pause and wait to read the reviews before checking out Rutkoski's next book.

Ordinary Love

An easy read about how we can carve out our own lives for ourselves, no matter our situations, and no matter the stage of our lives. The prose is perfect and simple, effective without pushing to core message of the book too heavily.

The romance aspect of the book was solid, though I’m biased in favor of any book that features a butch character. It has just the right amount of romantic intensity and sexuality without pushing it overboard. The characters’ devotion to one another feels real due to their respective pasts. I will say that at times, it felt a bit tropey — it relies heavily on miscommunication at several different points, which can definitely be done well, but it feels a bit excessive here. Perhaps, though, that’s the point — that the characters act this way because they’re burdened by their pasts and presents, so they can’t think about the future.

I was pleased that although this was a book with a central romance plot, the themes extended far beyond just romance. The “ordinary love” in question is about loving and coming back to not just your lover, but also your friends, your family, and your children, because ordinary, real love perseveres through difficult situations. It’s something that can be returned to.

In literary fiction, characters are the driving force of the plot, and I would have appreciated some more fleshing out of all our characters. In particularly, I think the antagonist, Emily’s husband, could have used some deeper meditation on his character. He’s very fun to hate in this, but because a good portion of this book centers around how the past, present, and future bleed together and how it makes us ourselves, I would have loved to see how that was true for even the unsavory characters of the book.

On a similar note, Emily’s character occasionally feels one-dimensional, but I think this actually serves her character instead of hurting it. A major part of her internal struggle is about figuring out who she is after trying on so many roles in her life, and falling into her role as a stay-at-home wife for a decade. It feels incredibly thoughtful, and I can sense the effort the author put into making her journey feel realistic, how sometimes she’s not certain of who she wants to be or how she wants to act.

Although you can sense how the book will end (a good sign— it means all the dominoes are lined up where they should be), it still keeps you hoping, waiting, and nervous for the next page. I was thoroughly engaged and enjoyed watching the progression of the protagonist’s journey. You root for her the whole way.

cannot wait to dive into this, it is one of my most anticipated reads of 2025 💫 i will be leaving my review on all retail sites as well, thank you!!

This novel follows Emily, a woman seemingly living the dream on the Upper East Side—until a chance encounter with her first love throws her carefully built life into emotional turmoil. What unfolds is a story about longing, unresolved heartbreak, and the difficult choices of revisiting the past.

The tension between Emily and Gen is the book’s strongest thread, capturing the intensity of first love and the complicated layers of reconnecting years later. Their dynamic is emotionally charged and believable, even when the plot reverses into predictable territory.

While some secondary characters and conflicts—like Emily’s troubled marriage and strained relationship with her parents—could have been more fully developed, the story remains engaging enough to keep readers invested. The setting is well drawn, and the writing is clean, if not especially daring.

Overall, this is a solid read for fans of emotional dramas and rekindled romance. It doesn’t break new ground but explores familiar themes with sincerity and heart.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I think I've been reading Marie Rutkoski books since I was a freshman in high school . I remembering reading The Winner's Curse in one sitting while I was on vacation in Canada and then dying when I finally got my hands on the rather emotionally devastating sequel a year later. The third book in that trilogy is one of my favorite books of all time and one that I've reread many times over the years.

Now I'm an adult still reading her stories so I'm not shocked that I very much enjoyed this novel. It was such a sweet, hesitant love story between two people who had always cared for each other but were separated due to miscommunication, trauma, and circumstance. I loved Emily and Gen together and sighed a big sigh of happiness when they finally got together (on the very, very last page).

Ordinary love is a romance novel but it's also a story of a woman surviving an extremely abusive relationship. Marie Rutkoski describes the terrible alienating feelings that being trapped in an abusive cycle with someone can engender so well. Every scene Emily had with Jack was vividly terrifying, even their more mundane interactions, which were filled with manipulation and gaslighting. I wish there was a bit more closure when it came to that whole plot line but in the end, I suppose Jack didn't matter anymore, only the new happy life Emily was building. I really enjoyed that optimistic ending.

* Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me this book in exchange for an honest review

Emily an Manhattanite mom contents with the end of her marriage to her controlling husband and reconnecting with her first love Gen. Weaving together class, queerness, family and friendship this is a sweeping romance from adolescence to adulthood. Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for an advanced copy for an honest review.

How will I recover from this? The stunning note from Knopf at the beginning of my ARC described this book perfectly: “In Marie Rutkoski’s novel, which unspools in two timelines across decades, we see a pair of girls growing up in a small town where ‘lesbian’ is only spoken in a hiss, we see the yawning chasm between state school and Harvard, we see the dawn of gay marriage in New York, and we see a culture slowly beginning to shift, to allow for a different kind of love to be considered ordinary. We preempted Ordinary Love in a passion buy-out from under a flock of other publishers (leaving them devastated in our wake) because we knew we had to have it. It is my great honor to share it with you, a reading experience that will linger in your brain and heart for months, a story that is equal parts sorrow and joy, and a work of literature that I hope you will find truly as extraordinary as we do.”

It’s high praise, and I have been anticipating the book so intensely since the moment it was announced, that for a moment I was afraid to be dissapointed. That moment dissapeared when I started reading. I dissapeared.

There is an inexplicable lucidity in the writing of this novel. Perhaps it is a love for commas and long sentences, the effortless eloquence, and fragments delicately placed. It is, of course, a familiar literary style, but it’s also Rutkoski’s own—light, airy, easy. Toeing the line with contemporary romance, it’s the kind of lit fic that would be someone’s favourite because it’s truly a pleasure to read (and equally devastating). It reminds me of some of my favourite novels of a similar genre—Annie on My Mind, Last Night at The Telegraph Club, Tipping the Velvet. But I don’t remember the last time I picked up a book with text so atmospheric that I forgot I existed as I read it. I stayed up all night to finish it, and I don’t reread books much anymore, but all week I’ve been going back to re-read sections, and I will soon need to reread the whole novel (perhaps more than once)—and I would still be in danger of pulling all-nighters again. Very, very excited for my preordered signed copy that’s on the way.

The book is written in third person, past tense (my favourite, because of course). I was, in part, surprised to find Emily as the only limited omniscient narrator. But this story couldn’t have been written any other way. Emily’s thoughts are dazzling in their deceptively simplistic observations, desires, convictions. The intimate care Rutkoski put into the perspective of a survivor of abuse, a bisexual femme for butch lover, a mother, a daughter, a writer, a dedicated humanities student, a small-town teenager crushing and falling in love, radiates off the pages. I can relate to only select few of her experiences, but in reading from her point of view, her feelings became mine. I spent a whole day after finishing just thinking of her love for her children. You know a book is well written when you can identify viscerally with a character who has a completely different life from you.

When I initially began the novel, I thought it might be written in three parallel storylines, but it’s actually written roughly in three chronological phases, enhanced to be seamless by the perfect rhythm of the writing. The blurb says it is a “page-turning, irresistable novel about class, ambition, and bisexuality”, and these elements snuck in so subtly I was actually startled by the end when I realised the long way the characters had come, how their fluctuating financial positions and their authentic (sometimes derailed) aspirations in turn drew them apart and then brought them together. This was also very cleary never because they were ever quite incompatible (I’ve seen few fictional pairings of characters that so deeply love each other), but because they needed to grow the courage to be completely honest with each other, despite the sheer complexities of the situations they kept finding themselves in.

Rutkoski’s most obvious talent (since her debut) is her writing of dialogue. Deliriously witty, delicious, and made me both giggle and cry at the simplest, most non-offensive exchanges. Gen and her vibrant group of queer adult friends is in stark contrast to Emily’s posh college circle at Harvard earlier in the book, but both interactions cause utter delight. As the letter from Knopf said, I read most of this book with my heart in my throat, and when Emily and Gen spoke as adults (in simple, but meaningful, achingly easy conversation) after we finally came back around to present day, I suddenly felt a great weight lift and startled myself by breaking into all-out sobbing. (I was soon to find out this would certainly not be the last time.) I realised in a few more pages that in my melancholic reading, I had began to expect that this would not be a passionate romance. I was wrong. Their teen romance was profoundly relatable, but sweet and nostalgic—In contrast, I confess I was never once normal about it when Gen and Emily were on the page together as adults.

While this story is deeply personal to the characters, the detailed historical and sociopolitical backdrop leaps out in certain parts. The telephones and letters, the subtle confusion (from straight people) that a butch can be considered attractive, the ease through which a femme can pass as straight (which often leads to harm rather than privilege) enhanced especially due to the invisibility of bisexuals. I was touched at the explicit inclusion of a bisexual femme, no doubt under the guidance of the entire list of experienced authors, including Malinda Lo, in the acknowledgements. (“Butch” is not used, probably due to the setting being past the era of the term.) In the age of the internet and the recent wave of (often implicit) reactionary TERF rhetoric and purity culture pushed by algorithms, it was comforting to read about the timeless, palpable warmth and vibrant diversity that can only exist in an IRL queer community, through the lens of a bisexual woman who instantly senses her belonging when surrounded by it.

Something about the instances where characters face difficulties are subtle, almost soft. Even the intimate partner violence, which is laid out in detail, is not exactly triggering to read, only discomfitting and restlessly heartbreaking. There is no sexual violence, no slurs. There is a kindness in this book towards its characters (and, by extension, its readers), uncommon in stories about minoritised groups, that makes it feel like a hug. It doesn’t sugarcoat struggles, but it feels more real because of its gentleness, perhaps because only a writer who has been there themself could hold a reader’s hand so firmly through this. I feel like I could read the last line over and over again, and never get tired of it.

Once I finished the book and caught up on sleep, I spent a day being dazed. It was like waking up from an embodied experience such as a dream, and trying to objectively recall how I felt about it. By every day that has passed since, my sheer fondness for the book only grows. I’ve spent a week trying to write a review that accurately describes it. My friends are sick of me raving about it, but I can’t stop. I think it’s easily going to be my favourite book of the year by a mile, even though it’s a great year for sapphic releases, with tough competition. All I can say is, please read it. If you relate to aspects of it, the experience will be transformative. And if you don’t relate at all, you will truly feel your heart expand as you read. Either way, you will be left changed.

So much thanks to Knopf and Netgalley for an e-ARC!

A friends to lovers/second chance sapphic romance, with a lot of predictable miscommunications over the years that often felt frustrating to me as the reader. Didn’t love the characters as much as I wanted to, and in the end often found myself skimming to see how it ended, as it just felt a bit too long.

However, if you’re looking for a litfic, sapphic romance, with an emotionally abusive husband in the middle, add in some coming of age flashbacks, and some steamy scenes, I’d recommend you give it a try.

Also, the cover design is perfection. And couldn’t stop casting Towa Bird as Gen Hall in my mind.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was really two different stories - the story of a woman in an abusive marriage and the story of a woman reconnecting with her first love. The stories didn't blend together as well as they could have but it was still a compelling read. There were some minor plot points with the years this book was set that didn't quite work - perhaps they will get fixed as I read an ARC.

Ordinary Love is an extraordinary novel about love, queerness, and choosing yourself. The characters blew me away. I fully expected to see Gen Hall racing in the Olympics; that's how real they feel. The various subplots were given so much care, and their central point about forgiveness and second chances really tied the story together. This is a book to read when you need to feel everything and be reminded that the best moments in life are found in the ordinary.

Thank you to the publisher for my copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Woah! I was not expecting Ordinary Love by Marie Rutkoski to become one of my favorite novels of the year. This was such a poignant tale of abuse, queerness, parental neglect, identity, and romance. In Ordinary Love, Marie Rutkoski crafts a beautiful story of second chances.

At the center of this story is Emily, an intelligent and beautiful woman, who meets Gen during her childhood. Their friendship immediately blossoms into something more. However, as they get older and college arrives, they inevitably drift apart. While apart, Emily marries a man name Jack and Gen becomes an Olympian.

As the story unfolds, we are sent through time to understand how Emily and Gen got to where they are before meeting once again. Along the way, we meet Emily’s abusive husband Jack, parents, friends, and children.

Ordinary Love is a story of second chances and reflection. I laughed. I cried. I smiled. Ordinary Love invoked almost every emotion out of me. There were so many things I enjoyed about this one including the richness of the story, the carousel of characters, the will they/won’t they element, and the writing style. The prose was not too flowery but very rich and vivid in a palatable way.

Ordinary Love includes several tropes one to expect in a second chance romance novel, but it is also a reflective and philosophical read—making it also a sort of literature fiction novel. Emily, our main character, struggles with a lot in this one. In a way, this story is also sort of a coming of age novel—or coming into being.

This was a stunning read. My only critique is that I felt the novel dragged a bit near the third act. Other than that, I ABSOLUTELY RECOMMEND IT.

Rating: 4.4/5

I am absolutely obsessed with this book. I have already re-read it three times. Author Marie Rutkoski completely transported me to another world where love, motherly and romantic, triumphs in the end. Her tale of two very different FMC who are ultimately soulmates hit so many achingly beautiful highs that as a reader I'm left yearning for more. I will be buying ever version of this book I can get my hands on. A devastating masterpiece!

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf and NetGalley for providing an eARC for a honest review.

In *Ordinary Love*, we follow Emily, a stay-at-home mother with a seemingly perfect life. She has a handsome, successful husband, two wonderful children, and a beautiful home on Manhattan's Upper East Side. However, beneath this facade of perfection lies an environment filled with manipulation and stress. As she grapples with the decision of whether to leave her manipulative narcissistic husband, she unexpectedly encounters Gen, her first love, whom she never quite got over. Could this be the second chance at love that she desperately seeks, or will it jeopardize the safety and stability she has created for her children?

Using a dual timeline narrative, Marie Rutkoski weaves a compelling story of first love, forgiveness, strength, and the complexities of trust. I truly enjoyed this book! I also appreciated the representation of bisexuality and Emily’s relationship with her queer identity and the queer community as a whole. Highly recommend!

DNF @ 10%

This is absolutely a me issue. I've like Rutkoski's fantasy books in the past, so I anticipated enjoying this one, but I just struggle so much with literary as a genre. Also, this one starts off with the husband being cruel to a kid, so check your CWs before you read.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for the opportunity to read and review.

While this is literary fiction in the vein of Ann Patchett, I was biting my nails the entire novel, needing to know what choice Emily would make. Its an engrossing and beautiful story with believable characters.

Emily has a seemingly perfect life but it’s now unraveling. A chance encounter with her old high school best friend reignites old passions and brings of questions of the future.

I loved the author’s book, Real Easy. Being a completely different type story, I wasn’t sure how I’d like this one but I ended loving it too. It takes talent to write so well within different genres! I loved this one because it really had two story lines: Emily’s family relationship and coming to terms with the reality of her marriage; and her feelings towards Gen and whether they were a thing of the past or more than that and part of her identity. All of this will be discovered and the reader is lucky enough to be taken along for the ride.

“It was the kind of happiness whose only worry is the loss of that happiness.”

Ordinary Love comes out 6/10.

This excellent book is a romance wrapped in literary fiction. In short, the writing is exquisite.

Emily and Gen grow up in a small town in Ohio. Neither is at all wealthy but Gen is very poor. In high school, they both join the track team and their friendship blossoms until it becomes more. But the relationship is not destined to last past freshman year of college.

Heartbroken, Emily meets Jack, a very wealthy hedge fund executive who dazzles her with money and right after Emily's graduation, the two marry. But over the years, Emily slowly realizes that she has overlooked and rationalized Jack's controlling nature and angry flare-ups, leaving him once and then returning. When she leaves a second time trying to protect her two children, she runs into Gen at a fundraiser. Gen is now an Olympic medalist and an openly lesbian celebrity.

While trope-wise, this is a second chance romance, there's so much richness here that the book transcends genre. It is a must-read for anyone who loves romance, sapphic lit, great writing, and incredible character development.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.