Given Our History
A Novel
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
In this sparkling romance, two professors with a complicated past get a second chance to prove history won't repeat itself.
Assistant professor Clara Fernsby is nothing if not driven. She’s wanted to teach history since she was fourteen, and she hasn’t let anything stand in her way—not even the love of her life. And it all paid off in the end, because she landed a well-paid position at a private liberal arts college fresh out of grad school, and this year, she’s finally up for tenure.
When Theodore Harrison is brought on for the fall semester as a visiting scholar, it’s an unexpected blast from Clara’s past. She hasn’t spoken to Teddy since rejecting him over a phone call ten years ago. Now that he’s here, she’s reminded of their time together at every turn: autumns spent at a sleepaway camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains, trading battered history books and burned CDs with the quiet, dark-haired boy she once fell in love with.
That boy might’ve been her best friend, but the man teaching HIST-322 is a total stranger—or so she thinks. As they spend evenings working on a shared project and brainstorming over drinks at a college bar, Clara realizes she’s at risk of falling all over again. Given their history, she knows there’s every chance he’s not interested. But history’s all down to interpretation, and this time around, she’s got no intentions of repeating it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For this earnest contemporary, Miller (Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts) combines two popular tropes: friends to lovers and second-chance romance. As teens at summer camp, history nerd Clara Fernsby befriended Teddy Harrison, who absorbed her academic enthusiasm. Their friendship lasted well into adulthood, but when, in grad school, Teddy expressed his interest in something more, Clara's insistence that the relationship stay platonic so she could focus on her career drove them apart. Ten years later, Clara's a history professor at a small liberal arts college angling for tenure and trying to be a role model for her college-age sister, who lives with her. She's thrown when her new colleague turns out to be Teddy, who'll be sharing her office. Teddy is eager to rekindle the old spark, but while Clara never recovered from losing him as her closest friend, she's afraid of making choices they both might regret. The academic setting feels somewhat dry and Clara's determination to stand in the way of her own happiness makes her a frustrating heroine, but readers will appreciate Miller's examination of the challenges of balancing career and romance. It's a familiar formula, but it works just fine.
