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Review: Once and Again by Rebecca Serle


Blurb from Goodreads:
The women of the Novak family were each born with a they can, just once, turn back time.

Lauren has known since she was fifteen that her mother Marcella saved Lauren’s father from a deadly car accident. Dave is alive and happy, and out on the Malibu waves. But ever since, Marcella, her power spent, has lived in fear of what she won’t be able to reverse. Her own mother, Sylvia, is her polar a free-spirited iconoclast with a glamorous past she only hints at. Lauren has spent her life between these two role models—and waiting for her own catastrophe to strike.

Then one summer, Lauren’s husband takes a job in New York and she moves back to Broad Beach Road, back into her childhood home on the shores of Malibu. Lauren looks forward to surfing with her dad again and perhaps repairing an unspoken fracture in her relationship with her mother. What she doesn’t expect is for the boy next to door to return home as Stone, Lauren’s first love, who broke her heart nearly a decade before.

As Lauren falls into familiar patterns, with her family and, more dangerously, Stone, she finds herself thinking about all the choices, large and small, that have brought her to this moment. And wondering, finally, if one of them should be undone.
 
I always enjoy Rebecca Serle's books and her latest is no exception.  The entire book feels anxiety inducing, and for good reason -- you get inside the head of Lauren.  While I didn't love the ending, this was still well written and interesting!

Once and Again comes out next week on March 10, 2026 and you can purchase HERE.  
What is it about distance that lends itself so easily to fantasy?
What is it about familiarity that doesn't?

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