Review: It All Comes Back To You - Melissa Wiesner

Review: It All Comes Back To You - Melissa Wiesner - August 2023

I'll be honest—I've been in a bit of a romance reading slump lately. After devouring countless meet-cutes and happily-ever-afters, I found myself craving something with more emotional weight. When I stumbled upon Melissa Wiesner's "It All Comes Back to You," the promise of angst and genuine emotion was exactly what I needed to pull me back into the genre.

This book immediately reminded me of Cecelia Ahern's "Where Rainbows End" in the best possible way. We first meet Anna at sixteen and Gabriel at eighteen, thrown together for a college project despite being complete opposites. Their unlikely friendship blooms beautifully on the page, and Melissa Wiesner captures that intoxicating feeling of finding your person at exactly the wrong time in life.

What follows is a masterclass in second-chance romance spanning nearly two decades. The structure—following Anna and Gabe as they connect, drift apart, and reconnect every three to four years—creates this beautiful, heartbreaking rhythm. As a reader, you become acutely aware of the invisible thread binding them together, even when life's obstacles seem insurmountable. Everyone around them can see they're meant to be together, making their separation all the more frustrating and poignant.

The central conflict stems from Anna's devastating secret and Gabe's well-intentioned betrayal of her trust. Without spoiling anything, I'll say that Melissa Wiesner handles this delicate plot point with nuance, showing how one moment of poor judgment can ripple through decades.

However, I do have one significant gripe: the subplot involving Anna's long-lost mother felt criminally underdeveloped. After years of buildup around this mysterious figure, their reunion is relegated to barely a few sentences before she disappears from the narrative entirely. This felt like a major missed opportunity for deeper character development and emotional payoff.

Despite this frustration, "It All Comes Back to You" succeeds as an emotionally satisfying new adult romance. Melissa Wiesner proves that the old adage holds true—if you love something, let it go, and if it's meant to be, it will come back to you. The angst is real, the emotions authentic, and the payoff worth the twenty-year wait.

For fellow romance readers experiencing genre fatigue, this book might be exactly the emotional reset you need.

 

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4nACZSs