Overdue by Stephanie Perkins

Ingrid Dahl is a bubbly 29-year-old library staffer at the North Ridgetop Branch Library who for four years has shared the Circulation Desk with Macon Nowakowski, known for being somewhat grumpy to patrons, although not to Ingrid. When Ingrid’s younger sister gets engaged, she and her long-time boyfriend Cory start talking about marriage themselves and realize they aren’t ready. Because they’ve been together since they were 18, they decide to take a break for a month and date other people, then decide if they want to get married.

Ingrid is shocked by how quickly this happened – Cory has already moved out of their apartment – but she knows what she wants to do: have a fling with Macon. When she tells him her news, he thinks it is a terrible idea:

My smile grew reassuring. “It only needs to make sense to me, and it does. I know what I’m doing.”

Unfortunately, this was the exact moment that I realized I did not know what I was doing. That somehow, despite all the scenarios that had run through my head since saying goodbye to Cory, I had neglected to imagine this crucial transition between telling Macon I wanted to date and telling Macon I wanted to date him. The omission now seemed glaring. It also occurred to me only now – at the worst possible moment – that this might be considered using him.

Ingrid realizes the plan is flawed for many reasons: not merely that Macon might not want to participate (he is appalled) but where is she to find (quickly) other men with whom to experiment and how she (and they) might feel after a month. It also upsets her that Cory finds new girlfriends very quickly. One of the things I found realistic was how frugal all the characters have to be because their industries are so abysmally low-paying:

It didn’t bother me that he was asking about money. All of us librarians talked openly about our lack of finances. The government didn’t pay us well – fully weaponizing the knowledge that anybody willing to work with books would be willing to do it for a meager salary – so we were all thrifty by necessity.

This also applies to publishing and bookselling. When my friend Jeanmarie and I first moved to New York to work at Warner Books and Bantam Books respectively, we were paid so little that we could barely afford to take the subway to work. Ingrid does not possess a master’s degree in library science so technically she is not a librarian but she answers reference questions in addition to handling the circulation desk with Macon. The library staff are well-drawn secondary characters. Sue is the head librarian, Alyssa is the children’s librarian, and Elijah is the page, handling shelving. Sue has been trying to get Ingrid to take advantage of a municipal program that would pay for her to get an MLIS but she has resisted, although she’d make more money. I found Ingrid’s unwillingness odd (given I earned an MLIS remotely during the pandemic and it was time consuming, not difficult) until it becomes clear that her dream is to open a bookstore. Macon encourages her to pursue this goal, and even those who don’t like romance will enjoy reading about the bookstore Ingrid and her friends plan and open, as well as the way she helps Macon refurbish his home.

This was one of my Most Anticipated Second Half of 2025 Books. I enjoyed Perkins’ YA novels, Anna and the French Kiss (which got a lot of attention and was one of my favorite reads of 2011), Lola and the Boy Next Door, and Isla and the Happily Ever After (When did Isla became a trendy name? I didn’t even know how to pronounce it until a friend named her daughter), so was interested when I heard she was making her adult debut. The book is beautifully designed with images of old-fashioned (!) library check-out pockets on the cover and identifying each month of Ingrid’s tumultuous year. As in many books, a little communication between the characters would move along the action/solve problems but then there would be no story, would there. Ingrid needs time on her own for self-realization: to recognize her own dreams and figure out how to achieve them before she is ready for a new romance, but in the year that is encompassed in Overdue she eventually achieves both and the result is an entertaining read.

Title: Overdue
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Publication: St. Martin’s, hardcover, 2025
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Source: Library