Title: Again Again

Author: E. Lockhart

Type: Young Adult Fiction

Pages: 304

Published: 2020

Adelaide’s life has been turned upside down by her brother’s addiction, her family’s separation and her devastating breakup with Mikey. With an aching heart and an unfinished school project hanging over her head, threatening her final grades, Adelaide chooses to stay at her boarding school for the summer, walking professors’ dogs and falling in and out of love.

Adelaide’s narrative voice occasionally fractures with added line breaks when her emotions are most heightened. Adelaide is white, Jewish, and on reduced tuition at the largely wealthy and WASP-y Alabaster; Jack is olive-skinned, and several secondary characters are racially diverse. What begins as romance becomes a thoughtful exploration of the expectations Adelaide places on herself and others; in each timeline, she must confront her own fears and shortcomings. Toby’s addiction is sensitively portrayed; the sibling relationship emerges as the true heart of this story in any timeline.

Adelaide’s role in the book is honest and heartfelt, Lockhart respects the notion of addiction as she tells the reader about Toby’s recovery and how the siblings navigate to their new normal.

The narrative then breaks into several possibilities of how their relationship might progress. Adelaide also works to complete a set design for Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love to save a failing grade from the previous year and tremulously starts to rebuild her bond with her brother despite her feelings of betrayal after the pain his addiction has caused the family.

This is a love story, but the romance is nowhere near central. It’s purposefully peripheral, as it’s there as a means of Adelaide waking up to how she behaves towards others in her life and specifically, those people who are closest to her. She’s privileged and healthy, but she can’t take those blinders off to see the bigger picture and to see where she herself is falling apart or too dependent upon others to give her reason and purpose.

The story plays out in a number of different ways throughout the book. Sometimes Adelaide and Jack are together. Sometimes Adelaide is a good sister to her sick brother. Sometimes, she’s a nasty human being — and in each of these realities, we see a complex picture of who she is.

Although this is my first Lockhart book, she manages to create perception and time, treating readers to multiple versions of Adelaide’s experiences, from romantic encounters to feedback from teachers. The creative format highlights Adelaide’s uncertainty and elevates her summer into a coming-of-age experience that readers will find relatable.

We learn more about Adelaide and her family through her thoughts and text messages. We see how certain scenarios could play out with one slight change. This is where it got confusing in the beginning as there is no real warning about this. It was an interesting way to do things, but hard to stay track of at times.

I’ll give this book at 3/5 rating.