Thank you to Random House Publishing for an eARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Jack Jr wakes form a two year coma and has to face the family he left a decade ago and hasn’t seen since, as well as the COVID pandemic. This book was a wonderfully slow slice of life, character-driven story focusing on the beauty in mundane, everyday life. That’s usually right up my alley, but there were a few things about this book in particular that just didn’t work for me. First, I don’t enjoy consuming media about COVID times (it’s just too soon for me), so a big heads up if you’re the same way. Secondly, as someone who’s spent a lot of time around hospital systems and healthcare, the some of the beginning hospital scenes and the romance subplot really took me out of the book, so much so that I had to set the book down after two chapters and didn’t come back to it for a couple weeks. There were also some past memories that were introduced with a lot of suspense, but the build up to these reveals was too much and unnecessary. It made parts of the book confusing because you didn’t have the background context for why characters were acting a certain way to really care, and I don’t think it was necessarily to hold back on revealing those moments for so long. Juno and Jack Jr.’s dad were both really strong characters that I really connected with and cared about throughout the story. Jack Jr. wasn’t a flat character, but I didn’t feel as connected to him as I did to his dad and nephew, which also meant I wasn’t as connected to the core of this book about the growth of the main character. I appreciated the grounding reminder from this book of the importance in family and that everything will work out in the end. This book accepts you and says “take a breath, you’re doing alright.”