The Rewind

I’ve always been a fan of high concept love stories but show me one set in the nineties that takes place around New Year’s Eve and I’m pretty well guaranteed a book I’m going to enjoy. The Rewind presents an excellent setup: two exes wake up together with wedding bands on their fingers and no idea how they got there. So far, so invested. Throw in a few classic romance tropes—first loves, second chance love, enemies to lovers, waking up together in your old dorm room (that might not be a trope, but maybe it should be)—and you have a delicious rum punch of a book.

Ezra and Frankie used to date. They broke up ten years ago and haven’t stayed in touch, let alone amicably. But when they wake up together the night before a mutual friend’s wedding, with no memory of the night before, they must work together to establish what happened. They retrace not only their steps but also their relationship as we find out why it all went wrong. Will this trip down memory lane cause them to reconcile or simply cement their decade-long resentment towards one another?

The Rewind is an unabashed nostalgia-fest and a great second chance romance. I’d particularly recommend to anyone who lived through the nineties, Y2K, and cassette tapes. Put on your double denim, power up that lava lamp, and let’s read a rom-com like it’s 1999.

When college sweethearts Frankie and Ezra broke up before graduation, they vowed to never speak to each other again. Ten years later, on the eve of the new millennium, they find themselves back on their snowy, picturesque New England campus together for the first time for the wedding of mutual friends. Frankie’s on the rise as a music manager for the hottest bands of the late ‘90s, and Ezra’s ready to propose to his girlfriend after the wedding. Everything is going to plan—they just have to avoid the chasm of emotions brought up when they inevitably come face to face.

But when they wake up in bed next to each other the following morning with Ezra’s grandmother’s diamond on Frankie’s finger, they have zero memory of how they got there—or about any of the events that transpired the night before. Now Frankie and Ezra have to put aside old grievances in order to figure out what happened, what didn’t happen . . . and to ask themselves the most troubling question of all: what if they both got it wrong the first time around?