Gretchen is happy with her life...mostly. She's strong, independent, and a successful entrepreneur. She's reached every goal she's set for herself, so the fact that she's about to turn 40 while still dealing with the indignities of the dating apps shouldn't matter, but it does. So when she decides to embark on a quest to embrace her inner crone while serving as an "artist in residence" at an art camp in the woods, it seems like the perfect plan. Until she meets Teddy, the grumpy bass player from a moderately successful rock band who failed to read the fine print and thus failed to understand what kind of camp he was signing up for. Gretchen is drawn to him against her better judgment, and needs to decide whether her "cronification" is all it's cracked up to be.

So, as a woman approaching her mid-40s, I deeply related to Gretchen's feeling of being unmoored. I never thought I would understand the mid-life crisis, yet here we are...

Gretchen is a deeply relatable character in other ways as well. Her cheerful demeanor is the personification of the sunshine trope, but, as Teddy astutely notes, there is definitely some cynical sour underpinning the sweet. Gretchen's need to reach certain benchmarks in her life is so on point -- as she outlined the expectations she set for herself, I started to feel uncomfortably seen. Marking stuff off the list isn't all it's cracked up to be, and it certainly doesn't fill the voids that can persist in other areas. (Not that I know anything about that at all...)

As for Teddy, he is the quintessential grump, but as with most grumps, it masks deeper hurts, emotional vulnerabilities, and an empathetic streak that no amount of grouchiness can hide. I loved his evolution from apathetic rock star to dedicated mentor. His relationship with his sister was a great way to humanize him in ways beyond his relationship with Gretchen, and a method of bringing in a backstory that made sense, rather than forced.

I did enjoy Gretchen and Teddy's relationship overall. I love reading characters who are true adults, with actual lives and obligations that can interfere with a standard HEA. And these two were no different - the fact that they were already from different walks of life and different cities was a factor in how their relationship progressed and where it ultimately ended up. It was a refreshingly normal way of resolving the obstacles.

My only real knock against this story is that I struggled with the underlying reasons for the third-act conflict. Up to that point, these were two adults having adult conversations and forging an honest path forward. And then it just seemed to...stop. They stopped being honest with themselves, let alone each other, which made their conflict devolve into miscommunication, which is never my favorite trope.

That being said, I really enjoyed the book overall, I was rooting for Gretchen (and Teddy), and I found myself longing for a way to exit real life for a month to spend time around bonfires with s'mores and music.