About the Book
-
Author:
- Rachel Lynn Solomon
- Genres:
- Boy-Girl Romance
- Contemporary
- Voices:
- Cis Boy
- Cis Girl
- Jewish
- White (Non-Specified)
Cover Story: A Different Shade of Blue
BFF Charm: Big Sister
Talky Talk: Gilmore Girls
Bonus Factors: Mental Health Rep, College
Anti-Bonus Factor: Dan Scott Award for Awful Parenting
Relationship Status: Reunited and It Feels So Good
Stop right here if you haven’t read Today Tonight Tomorrow! Otherwise you’ll be spoiled on the book, and that would be a damn shame.
Cover Story: A Different Shade of Blue
The cover for Today Tonight Tomorrow, the first book in the Rowan and Neil love story, was a similar shade of blue, but uniformly so. The cover for Past Present Future is a nighttime scene in a city, with a scarf on a lamppost and our two leads walking away from each other while looking back. It’s a more mature book cover, perfect for the more serious sequel.
The Deal:
Rowan and Neil got together on the last day of high school; their longtime academic rivalry was just a cover for their enemies-to-lovers, competitive love match. Now they are off to different colleges — NYU for Neil, Emerson for Rowan — and trying to make it work long-distance. There’s so much to explore — not just late-night eateries and making new friends and struggling in new classes, but also of themselves. And it’s tough. Rowan is floundering for the first time in her writing class, unable to write romance (her favorite genre)… and she worries, is it because she needs to be tortured to write? Neil is questioning his major, and his incarcerated father is taking up too much of his brain space, and maybe he needs to process this alone for a while? Can the two make it work?
BFF Charm: Big Sister
You guysss. I just wanted to wrap my arms around Rowan and Neil and hug it out. We know these two from the first book and that means we already love them — Neil and his awkward nerdiness, Rowan and her fierce streak. It’s wonderful watching them grow into a more mature version of themselves. But what does that mean to their relationship, if they are changing people? Can they grow together, or are they growing apart? As someone who was in a long-distance relationship during college, I could relate: these questions are hard. Rowan’s parents think that she should break up with Neil and have new experiences while at Emerson, and she wonders if that has some validity. Neil’s imprisoned father keeps writing letters to Neil imploring him to visit, and he can’t seem to make room for Rowan in that part of his life, which makes him wonder if he’s a burden. It’s just… I feel their heartbreak! Here’s some soup and some Kleenex.
Swoonworthy Scale: 9
I have never rated a book as high as this one for swoonworthiness, but it’s there. Oh yes, it’s there. This book might be rated more New Adult than Young Adult because our leads are 18 and 19, are in college, and definitely have relations when they see each other on long weekends. Though they slept together in the first book, they didn’t explore each other as much as they did in this one. It’s steamy in here, y’all.
Talky Talk: Gilmore Girls
When you have two near-perfect SAT scorers in a relationship with each other, they communicate rather well (when they do communicate, that is). Rowan and Neil are so earnest, so in love, that it’s refreshing reading their dialogue. They might talk a little bit like adults, but they’re the top of their graduating class, so of course they have a maturity in their words. I found the prose to be not too stilted, not too stuffy, and not too juvenile: pitch-perfect.
Bonus Factor: Mental Health Rep
Neil starts to experience depression while he’s at school, and Solomon does a great job of describing the onset: the worry from himself that something is wrong, the concern from his friends that something isn’t quite right. I found the mental health rep in this book to be handled beautifully, and Neil’s reaction to it was honest in its portrayal.
Bonus Factor: College
We love a book with college in it! Two colleges, in fact. You might think that Solomon would bog us down with descriptions of classes and studies, and that is in abundance, but it all has a way of working with the plot, so it doesn’t feel shoehorned in. The author wrote convincingly about how chaotic and fun — and also devastating and confusing — freshman year of college can be.
Anti-Bonus Factor: Dan Scott Award for Awful Parenting
Neil’s father is in prison and won’t leave Neil alone with his letters. He was emotionally abusive before he was imprisoned and we see some of that in flashbacks from Neil’s POV. We want to shield Neil from his dad’s reach.
Relationship Status: Reunited and It Feels So Good
I’ll be honest, I don’t think every book with a HEA needs a sequel, but Solomon does a great job here, letting us spend more time with these two characters we love. A+, no notes.
Literary Matchmaking
Okay, so you weren’t supposed to read the review if you haven’t read the first book, but like, definitely don’t sleep on Today Tonight Tomorrow!
When You Get the Chance by Emma Lord is another book that follows overachieving students trying to succeed post-high school.
Ann Liang’s I Hope This Doesn’t Find You is about enemies-to-lovers in an Australian high school.
FTC Full Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. I received neither compensation nor kittens in exchange for this review.
