Alison Cochrun has done it again! She’s managed to write a queer romance that emotionally devastated me for days! We meet Rosemary and Logan: childhood best friends…until they weren’t. Ever since an incident that occurred when they were younger, they’ve been arch enemies. Even now, as adults teaching English at the high school they attended, they still loathe each other. The one thing they still have in common? The high school English teacher who shaped their lives and to whom they feel indebted: Joe.

The universe brings them back together at the end of a school year when Joe announces that he’s dying and wants to take a cross-country “death trip” from their small, pacific northwestern town to a seaside cottage he owns in Maine in which he intends to die on his own terms. The catch? He wants Rosemary and Logan to accompany him during the journey and be with him at the end. Will they be able to tolerate each other long enough to get Joe to Maine in one piece? 

This book has everything! Important discussions about death/dying and grief (of all types!), friends to enemies to lovers (!!!), road trip shenanigans, elder queer romance, neurodiversity, and (though it’s not explicitly mentioned or discussed) one of our MCs reads as though she’s on the gray-ace spectrum. If you’re wondering how much ~sexy~ content there is in this book – not much! It’s considerably lighter on the intimate scenes and heavier on the emotional interactions. I was a mess when I finished this book, and I hope you will be too! Don’t forget to check out trigger and content warnings before reading! This material isn’t for the faint of heart.