Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

When perusing available titles in NetGalley, the beginning of the description of this one really jumped out at me:

Ingrid Dahl, a cheerful twenty-nine-year-old librarian in the cozy mountain town of Ridgetop, North Carolina…

The description finishes with “Overdue is a beautiful, slow-burn romance full of lust and longing about new beginnings and finding your way.”

This book, which goes on sale October 7, 2025, is definitely a slow burn. The chapters are numbered and then clumped together in small multi-chapter sections named for the months of the year, and coming in at 416 pages, it takes a really long time for sparks to fly, for Ingrid’s story to take us from January to December.

And, truth be told, maybe I didn’t read the description closely enough (or looked closely enough at the authors who had written blurbs for the cover), maybe I am not the target audience for books in the romance genre.

The story begins with Ingrid and Cory, a co-habituating couple dating since college, for ELEVEN YEARS, with no talk of marriage, who have decided to take a break (if your mind automatically goes to that certain episode of Friends where Ross and Rachel argue incessantly about whether they were actually on a break or not, well, you’re right). The well-foreshadowed resolution of this ill-fated experiment is not a surprise or a shock.

There were things about this novel that I loved. Almost everyone in this story loves to read. The main setting begins in a library where we meet the staff of a small-town branch of the public library. I have spent a lot of time in libraries between my hometown public library, libraries at each school I’ve attended, and the public library in every place I’ve lived. For two years overseas I volunteered in the library at the school my daughters attended. From the library we go to a bookstore, also one of my favorite places on earth.

I loved the contrast of Ingrid’s personality with that of her best friend and co-worker Macon. She is upbeat and positive while he is somewhat of a curmudgeon. I especially loved his character development as someone who fed Ingrid, in more ways than one. His skills in the kitchen and in his garden were positive points for me. I loved the chunk of this book where Ingrid helps Macon renovate his house. I did wonder at times who was helping whom though.

I loved the ambition and drive it (finally) took for Ingrid to find her true path outside of the comfort zone she had established for herself, both personally and professionally. Once she makes up her mind as to what she wants to do for a living and with her life, Ingrid gets together the tools that she needs and goes for it. I loved the support of her group of close friends, although I’m not sure these people would have all been close friends in real life.

There were also things about this novel that I didn’t love. Ingrid turns 30 within the pages of this novel, yet she seems so emotionally immature throughout the book. Maybe it is an issue with my age in general or at least my generation that I found implausible the whole idea of not breaking up but going out to date and explore what else is out there romance-wise before settling down (again, after 11 years?) and moving toward marriage. Maybe this is about me and not about the plot.

I didn’t really understand the relationship between Ingrid and her parents, or the relationship between Ingrid and her sister Riley. I also felt that Ingrid’s relationship with her online friend Kat, a librarian in Australia, was odd. Ingrid says at one point, “…whenever I said or did something stupid, Kat was my first line of defense. But Cory was my second.” That’s a long way to go for emotional support.

Some readers like to know the “spice level” of a book before they choose to read it. This book, in true slow-burn fashion, starts out very tame but once it catches fire, the spice level does increase.

In posting my rating on Goodreads, I went back and forth between 3 and 4 stars. In the end, I chose 3, but I would have been happier with 3.5. Thank you to NetGalley and Saturday Books, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers, for this ARC.