Book lovers always enjoy books set in bookshops and libraries, and Overdue is about Ingrid, who works in a library. It’s where she finds comfort and it’s her safe space … until it isn’t, but I’m not going to tell you why! You’ll have to read the book.
Blurb:
Ingrid Dahl, a cheerful twenty-nine-year-old librarian in the cozy mountain town of Ridgetop, North Carolina, has been happily dating her college boyfriend, Cory, for eleven years without ever discussing marriage. But when Ingrid’s sister announces her engagement to a woman she’s only been dating for two years, Ingrid and Cory feel pressured to consider their future. Neither has ever been with anybody else, so they make an unconventional decision. They’ll take a one-month break to date other people, then they’ll reunite and move toward marriage. Ingrid even has someone in mind: her charmingly grumpy coworker, Macon Nowakowski, on whom she’s secretly crushed for years. But plans go awry, and when the month ends, Ingrid and Cory realize they’re not ready to resume their relationship – and Ingrid’s harmless crush on Macon has turned into something much more complicated.
Overdue is a beautiful, slow-burn romance full of lust and longing about new beginnings and finding your way.
My Review:
This book takes a look at a year in the life of Ingrid who was supposed to be on a one-month break from her long-term boyfriend, but that short break somehow gets extended when they realize that, having never dated anyone other than each other, one month was never going to be enough to explore all that the big wide, dating world has to offer!
When Ingrid’s sister gets engaged after only 2 years of being with her girlfriend, she wonders why she and Cory have never even discussed marriage – they’ve been together 11 years, and it’s never come up! And as much as most of us would see this as a major red flag, isn’t it just indicative of the comfort zones that we so often find ourselves in, and then prefer to stay in … usually for much, much longer than is necessary, or healthy? And maybe the fact that Ingrid’s had a huge crush on her colleague Macon all along is another teeny, tiny red flag that maybe her relationship wasn’t quite as stable as she thought it was.
So off she goes into the minefield of dating, and oh my word, she is so not ready! The author did a great job of navigating both Ingrid and the reader through the scary, sometimes funny, but more often than not, downright depressing and deplorable plethora of horrendously unappealing dating scenarios that exist. And all the time, Ingrid craves the comfort of having Cory back home with her so that they can get on with their lives and their “happily-ever-after”, while she cringes at the thought of him sowing his wild oats. But as time marches on and she starts to settle into being a temporary Singleton, something in her attitude, and her world, takes a major shift.
And then there’s Macon … a bit of an enigma really. We don’t really get to know all that much about him. He works in the library where Ingrid works, and he sounds like a bit of a quirky guy. He’s also a bit older than Ingrid – by 10 years or so. They do have a lot in common though and they have an easy, although often awkward, friendship.
I won’t tell you more about the actual story, other than to say that it’s a slow-burn and doesn’t develop in the way you might expect it to. It’s not your typical rom-com. Ingrid, as the central character is the main focus of the story and although there are many other characters that we get to know, she is one we hear from and about the most. It was interesting to see her growth and how she developed as an individual. She needed to learn how to “be” as a person in her own right without Cory, who she had been with for so long, and who she was so used to being with as part of a couple. Gaining her independence seemed unexpected to her in ways that she just never could have imagined, and it was as if she needed to learn an entire new way of taking up space in the world. I think the way this was described was so well depicted, and typically indicative of someone who had come out of a long-term relationship and who needed to re-learn … well, life, really!
Thank you to Compulsive Readers for the Blog Tour!
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