NOW & WHEN

A hackneyed premise with some solid emotional notes.

Wealer’s debut hovers uncertainly between rom-com, complete with a premise reminiscent of Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler’s The Future of Us (2011), and a thoughtful portrayal of female friendship in a town where many are struggling after the close of the largest business. In predominantly white and straight Alton, Skyler’s fortunate life—two best friends, a perfect boyfriend, and parents who are happily, albeit less profitably, reemployed after the mill’s closing—has two major problems: best friend Harper’s self-harm and hospitalization and glitchy phone updates from 11 years in the future indicating she’s going to end up with insufferable (but attractive) Truman. The uneasy marriage of the two stories through the plot device of a possible demolition of a beloved community space never fully succeeds, leaving readers with the sense that two books are vying for center stage. Wealer sympathetically evokes her setting, especially the financial constraints of a one-business Midwestern town, and provides a likable cast but ends up with a reductive tale in which doing nothing would have accomplished the same end and in which the protagonist grows from being pushed by the handsome male lead while the supporting female friendship tale coasts to a happy ending on the coattails of the romance.

Disappointing.