Genre 📚: Adult Contemporary, Romance
Tropes 💁♀️: Friends to lovers, Right person/Wrong time, Opposites attract, Holiday romance
Rep ✔️: Queer side characters
CW ⚠️: Divorce, loved one with cancer
Rating ⭐️: 4/5
I thought this was a fantastic premise — two best friends having the New Year’s Eve tradition of predicting each other’s outcomes for the upcoming year and the winner getting to make a big life decision for the loser. They could suggest moving states, pursuing grad school, exploring a relationship… And they’ll actually follow through, because they trust each other’s judgement. It’s a fun little game, until it’s not. Until the dangerous cocktail of built-up feelings.
The main storyline follows Florence and Tom returning home for their families’ joint NYE party. They haven’t talked for a year, since a fight blew up their friendship, but they pretend that everything’s fine in front of their loved ones. They reluctantly agree to team up to plan this year’s party, and as we see this play out, we also see their complicated history through flashbacks. How they met in eighth grade, how they experienced firsts in high school, how they yearned — oh, how they yearned — as young adults.
My favorite chapters, however, were the flashbacks to all the previous NYE parties. When they would read their predictions from the last year and the winner would come up with the next big decision. It was so achingly clear that they wanted to be together, and yet they chose the decision that inevitably pushed the other away. Their friendship was too important to them, and they didn’t want to risk losing comfort and stability for a fleeting romance.
GOD, it was frustrating. To the point that I had to put the book down at times. (I swear, friends-to-lovers stories drive me up the wall, but I always come back to them.) Flor and Tom really put themselves through it, and as maddening as it was, it was oddly addicting. I was invested in their years-long tradition, in the years-long yearning — it gave the right amount of fun and angst, like a wintery version of People We Meet on Vacation.
**Much thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. In Every Future, It’s Us will be released on December 1, 2026.
