The Rewind

August 1, 2022

Frankie and Ezra spent their years at college in an unlikely, opposites-attract love affair. Frankie was determined to experience freedom from her family's expectations, with no real vision for her future. Ezra was the reliable one with a plan, devotion for his terminally ill mother, and a desire for a happy and committed relationship. However, their relationship ended in a spectacular fight and 10 years of stony silence between them. Now the two are back on campus for a mutual friend's wedding on the eve of Y2K, and their reunion has resulted in them waking up in bed together with a pair of wedding rings and no memory of the previous night. They have only hours to determine what happened before the start of the wedding and a new millennium. Nineties nostalgia is alive and well in this moving story of a lost first love and second chances. Readers will enjoy piecing together both the story of the forgotten night and the reasons behind the relationship's disastrous first ending. VERDICT The collegiate atmosphere and New Year's Eve setting make this a cozy, romantic read from Scotch (Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing).--Meagan Day

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September 15, 2022
A decade after their messy breakup in 1989, two people find themselves in bed together the morning of New Year's Eve, wearing rings and with no recollection of what happened the night before. Ezra Jones and Frankie Harriman become best friends during their sophomore year at college. A once-in-a-generation piano prodigy as a child, Frankie stopped playing at 17, determined to finally control her own life. She re-creates herself at Middleton University in Massachusetts, keeping her talent a complete secret. Ezra is an anxiety-ridden but kind boy on a full merit scholarship whose mother is fighting ovarian cancer. By junior year, Ezra and Frankie are in love and inseparable. But in the hours before graduation, they have a knock-down fight, break up, and subsequently steer clear of each other for a decade. Then a pair of their college friends--April, now teaching literature at Middleton, and Connor, now an assistant hockey coach on campus--decide to get married in a "Party Like It's 1999"-themed wedding on the eve of the new millennium. Frankie is now a high-flying music manager; Ezra is wealthy after having sold a gaming model to Yahoo, and he's plotting the grandest gesture he can think of: He's going to propose to his girlfriend, Mimi, with his grandmother's 2-carat diamond ring once the new century begins. The story follows the day after the night before, and Ezra and Frankie's quest to retrace their steps and figure out if they are actually married. Author Scotch has written a book that moves in minutes rather than days and is told through memories as the pair walk around campus remembering episodes from their past--both from 10 years earlier and the night before. Many, many pages are spent hashing (and rehashing) the demons unearthed at each building they come to that have made them into the messy, complicated adults that they currently are. An engaging though repetitive story of a couple that come to accept their faults and in the process find their future.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 19, 2022
For this solid second-chance rom-com, Scotch (Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing) reunites a college friend group at an on-campus wedding on New Year’s Eve, 1999. College sweethearts Frankie and Ezra broke up on graduation day and have maintained an icy silence in the 10 years since—until they’re brought back together by their mutual friend’s wedding. After a night of partying with the bride and groom-to-be, they’re horrified to wake up together in Ezra’s freshman dorm room on the wedding day. Worse, Frankie is inexplicably wearing Ezra’s grandmother’s ring, which he had been planning to use to propose to his current girlfriend. Working to piece together what happened the night before turns into working to understand what went wrong all those years ago. But the clock is ticking: they still cannot always endure being in the same room together and they only have a few hours to talk the situation out before the wedding ends and all go their separate ways. Scotch’s humor leans to the slapstick, which can butt up oddly against the characters’ angst and heartbreak. Still, this emotional outing delivers both laughs and poignancy. Fans of Emily Giffin, Katherine Center, and Christina Lauren should check this out. Agent: Elisabeth Weed, Book Group.

Starred review from September 15, 2022
Scotch's latest is a second-chance rom-com set on a snowbound New England college campus at the turn of the millennium and told mainly through the internal monologues of the protagonists; actual dialogue is sparse. College sweethearts Frankie Harriman and Ezra Jones broke up before graduation and put the breadth of the country between them. Ten years later, they're back on campus to celebrate the wedding of mutual friends. A scavenger hunt, a lot of alcohol, and a concussion lead to Frankie and Ezra waking up together the morning of New Year's Eve in a twin bed in their freshman dorm with a gold band on Ezra's finger and his grandmother's ring on Frankie's finger. Did they get married? The tale is in the discovery of the night's events, Frankie and Ezra's reflections on the repercussions, their past, and their realization of who they want to be going forward. But does Frankie have the courage to be vulnerable and allow Ezra to see all her secrets and trust that he will accept her? Can Ezra lean into understanding Frankie's whole self and give up control and simply trust in her love for him?

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