Published By: Bloomsbury
Pages: 336
Released On: 07/02/2026
1976, Rhode Island.
Lily has two loves. There’s the boy, in whom she finds a kindred spirit. And then there’s Jane, her brilliant but troubled younger sister and best friend.
Lily has a plan. She’ll graduate, go to college, marry her high-school sweetheart and start a family of her own, her future unfolding before her as a bright, clear path.
But the laws of love and logic are not as simple as Lily thinks.
When one fateful night throws Lily’s life on an entirely new course, she’ll discover just how fragile the futures are that we so carefully plan and imagine for ourselves. Because the universe has a plan of its own – and what seems to be the end of one great love story might just be the beginning of another.
*****
Thanks to Bloomsbury for the gifted proof of this title in return for an honest review.
I enjoy novels that explore the same people over a long period of time because we get to see them grow and really become individuals, and this covers a relatively long period of time and I think it really works well.
It is quite slow at the start. I know you have to set the scene and introduce the characters and whatnot, but nothing really happens. Which isn’t an out and out negative point, because I prefer characters over plot myself, so I didn’t mind the pace too much.
I feel we’re kept at arms length from the characters. Even our main character of Lily felt quite distant, which made the characters who orbit her feel even more distant. Our main male character is never given a name, he is simply “the boy” which irked me slightly. But I’d love to know what her reasoning was behind this.
Having said that, I do think where she has excelled is in the relationships between the characters, particularly between Lily and her sister Jane, and it is this relationship that carries the story. We also get parental relationships, romantic relationships, friendships, “good” and “bad” relationships, and they’re all well created. But this backbone of Lily and Jane really holds the story together.
Being set in the 1960s onwards means there are some…unsavoury topics. I won’t spoil them here, but I think Debra has found an appropriate balance to be honest but not sensationalise.
It does get a bit bogged down in detail at times; there’s a substory involving bird watching, and so some of those passages were bogged down in the specifics of ornithology, which interrupted the flow of the story a bit for me.
Now, I’m not a prude in the slightest, but I didn’t like the sex scenes in this. I know in everyday relationships that sex does happen, obviously. But they felt a bit random here, a bit forced, like she needed to have those scenes in to make it realistic rather than making them feel organic.
It was nothing like I imagined it would be, but then again I can’t actually explain what it was I was imagining, which I know is maddingly unhelpful.
For all its ups and downs, there’s no denying Debra’s ability for storytelling, particularly for a debut novel. It’s very strong and has great promise and so I’m looking forward to what comes next.
Whilst I enjoyed it from the start, it definitely got better the further into it I got.
Books By Your Bedside 