“I suddenly felt faint. My former fiancé was my new boss.”
Anne Corey is mostly satisfied with her life. She chose to go to graduate school instead of following her boyfriend to San Francisco, which ended the relationship. However, despite the massive amounts of student loans, she loves being a professor at Fairfax University. She is sending out proposals for a book she has written about female authors. If it gets published, she will get on the tenure track and be able to spend the rest of her life doing what she loves. Then, a new president arrives at the university and of all the people in the world that it could be – it’s her former fiancé, Adam.
I’m not sure where I first heard about By The Book, but I know it was recommended by a blogger. I recently put it on my holds list and it was just a few weeks before it was available to check out from the library as an ebook. I didn’t know much about the book other than it was highly recommended.
Anne tries to avoid seeing Adam as much as possible, especially since she has just started dating the new writer in residence. Adam tries to warn her about him as they knew each other at a previous university, but Anne won’t hear it. However, as Anne starts having family troubles with her sister, her new boyfriend becomes less and less present. Anne eventually has to face if she has any lingering feelings for Adam and decide if love is worth the risk.
While I enjoyed By The Book, I would have liked it more if there had been more depth to Anne. It’s written in first person, but not a lot of Anne’s thoughts and feelings are shared along the way. There is also a lot of drama with her best friend Larry and several affairs in the book. It’s been many, many years since I’ve read Persuasion by Jane Austen so I can’t remember how that storyline was to compare it to this book (it’s supposed to be based on Persuasion).
Have you ever surprisingly encountered an ex? Share the experience in the comments!