There’s Always Next Year had all the ingredients for an emotional and engaging read, but unfortunately, it didn’t quite land for me. While I appreciated the themes and the unique dual-author perspective, I found myself struggling to connect with the characters on a deeper level. The story had moments of potential, but the emotional impact I was hoping for just didn’t hit. It’s a heartfelt book that may resonate more strongly with other readers, but for me, it ended up being just an okay experience.

What a great book with several different themes and topics wrapped in neatly! I am anticipating this release and would absolutely recommend it to friends.

This book is an alternating chapter POV where you have two characters, Dominique and Andy, facing similar but different challenges. Dominique made it big and moved to New York to become an influencer and model—except what you see online isn’t what is true. He’s actually struggling and about to take a deal to hopefully make some money and make it big again. It later turns out, this deal will also affect his family and community. Andy is a teen journalist who has found something big and is hoping to expose it before it’s all too late. In the midst of this, you have both characters realizing their love interests and finding out who they are along the way.

I liked that being queer wasn’t the entire plot of this as many books tend to be. It was simply a fact, even with them mentioning the very real struggles that queer people face. I did feel that the romance in here wasn’t fully fleshed out. Instead, what took center stage was the scandal. At that, you don’t really learn about this until about 55% into the book. And it felt like the authors were trying to build to this, but it didn’t shock me or stood out to me as much as I would like. I also was confused a bit by Andy’s morning, I just couldn’t comprehend what was going on. It was such a chaotic plot line I almost got lost. I enjoyed the theme of new year’s but also felt that if you were to remove the NYE party and food mentioned, it could’ve happened anytime of year.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and was an easy/fast read. I kept wanting to read and figure out how it ends.

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

An engaging leading duo plus complex and hard themes, handled with the care they deserve, merged together into this wonderfully written story.
A story full of emotion and care. All the stars for it!