SURPRISE! Apparently we believe in second chances so much, we gave an entire book one.
Meet THE BEST I EVER HAD, coming May 11!
Lo sent me a version of what would eventually become chapter 14 of this book on May 22, 2020. It was titled Frankie & Bobby. Fast forward to 2024. We turned those 17 pages into a book, but days before we were supposed to turn it in, we did something that felt bonkers: we cried and flailed and then put it away. We loved it, but we knew it wasn’t ready, and we hadn’t quite figured out how to get it there.
Very casual. Extremely relaxing. Authors LOVE having feelings they can’t resolve.
But we kept thinking about it. About these people and the lake and their whole ridiculous journey from nemeses to love to heartbreak to somehow, impossibly, love again. About their broken hearts and the story we still wanted to tell. And then FINALLY, we figured out how to bring it home.
Some of you know that LOVE AND OTHER WORDS had a similar beginning. You’d think that experience would have taught us to trust the process—to chill out. Clearly we need to learn every lesson the hard way and more than once.
After more than thirty books together, it still feels enormous to say: we made this, we’re obsessed (!!!!), and we hope you’ll be obsessed too.
THE BEST I EVER HAD has been almost 7 years in the making. We’ve been extremely normal about these two for approximately none of them.
May 11, 2027. Come to the lake with us. We’ve been saving you a seat on the dock.
Frankie Flowers and Bobby Falco have spent most of their lives trying to beat each other.
As neighbors turned academic rivals, they grew up competing over everything. Somewhere along the way, rivalry became friendship, friendship became love, and then, at eighteen, everything between them fell apart.
Eleven years later, Frankie has built the exact life she once dreamed of—far away from her tiny hometown. She’s successful, independent, and has perfected the art of not looking back. But when she finally returns to Lake Himmel for the summer, she discovers that some things haven’t changed nearly as much as she’d like.
The lake is still there. The house next door is still there. And so is Bobby Falco.
Bobby is no longer the boy Frankie remembers, but being around him still feels dangerously familiar: the competition, the banter, the uncanny way he sees straight through her. And as old feelings resurface, Frankie begins to wonder if the one thing more dangerous than their old rivalry is discovering what really ended it.
On Sale May 11, 2027 | Pre-order Today:
AMAZON BARNES & NOBLE BOOKS-A-MILLION BOOKSHOP.ORG HUDSON BOOKSELLERS WALMART Signed copies are available to pre-order from B&N and Books-a-Million!
