Overdue
By: Stephanie Perkins
Published Year: 2025
Publisher: Saturday Books
Pages: 416
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This in no way shape or form influenced my opinion of this novel.
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): Ingrid Dahl, a cheerful twenty-nine-year-old librarian in the cozy mountain town of Ridgetop, North Carolina, has been happily dating her college boyfriend, Cory, for eleven years without ever discussing marriage. But when Ingrid’s sister announces her engagement to a woman she’s only been dating for two years, Ingrid and Cory feel pressured to consider their future. Neither has ever been with anybody else, so they make an unconventional decision. They'll take a one-month break to date other people, then they'll reunite and move toward marriage. Ingrid even has someone in mind: her charmingly grumpy coworker, Macon Nowakowski, on whom she’s secretly crushed for years. But plans go awry, and when the month ends, Ingrid and Cory realize they’re not ready to resume their relationship― and Ingrid’s harmless crush on Macon has turned into something much more complicated.
Overdue is a beautiful, slow-burn romance full of lust and longing about new beginnings and finding your way.
First Impressions
When I got out of graduate school I had been in a reading rut for years. Stephanie Perkins’ novel Anna and the French Kiss was what got me out of it and back into reading. I was so excited to see that no only was she coming out with something new but that it was an adult novel. I could not wait to read it.
What I thought
Ingrid is a librarian who has just kind of sort of broken up with her boyfriend of 9 years. When her sister got engaged, she and Cory talked about how they had never dated anyone else and that if they were going to get married, they should take a break for a month and date other people. But that one month turns into another and another. Ingrid also realizes that her friendship with her coworker Macon might be something more and maybe she wants to explore it.
I found this concept interesting and relatable. I started dating someone at 19 and when we started talking about marriage, I worried about waking up at 40 and having regrets about never having dated anyone else. However, the way Ingrid and Cory talk about other people and not each other felt very obvious to me that they needed more than a break from their relationship.
This book moved month by month through a full year. It moves very slowly, but is definitely the kind of book that would be great in the cold winter months. You really get to live with Ingrid and Macon and all of Ingrid’s friends. It is more of a romance and more of a coming of age novel about Ingrid’s growth. Yes, she and Macon have a romance but she also explores who she wants to be as an adult. I found those parts of the story almost more interesting than I did the romance side.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Macon. And I thought he and Ingrid together were very cute. But to me, it wasn’t the center of the story. This story does kind of hammer home the “when it’s right you’ll know” kind of mentality. Both romantically and life wise. I am a believer in fate, so this didn’t bother me at all. But I could see it being annoying if you don’t think that way.
This is a solid 3.5 stars for me. I found a lot of it really enjoyable, but I also felt it could’ve moved a bit quicker. I think this is a solid first adult novel for Perkins and I hope she continues to write new stories. While this book didn’t have the same magic for me that I remember Anna and the French Kiss having, I still enjoyed it a lot.