[Review] Overdue - Stephanie Perkins

Summary: Ingrid Dahl, a cheerful twenty-nine-year-old librarian in the cozy mountain town of Ridgetop, North Carolina, has been happily dating her college boyfriend, Cory, for eleven years without ever discussing marriage. But when Ingrid’s sister announces her engagement to a woman she’s only been dating for two years, Ingrid and Cory feel pressured to consider their future. Neither has ever been with anybody else, so they make an unconventional decision. They'll take a one-month break to date other people, then they'll reunite and move toward marriage. Ingrid even has someone in mind: her charmingly grumpy coworker, Macon Nowakowski, on whom she’s secretly crushed for years. But plans go awry, and when the month ends, Ingrid and Cory realize they’re not ready to resume their relationship—and Ingrid’s harmless crush on Macon has turned into something much more complicated.

Overdue is a beautiful, slow-burn romance full of lust and longing about new beginnings and finding your way.. (Pub Date: Oct 07 2025)

To be honest I struggled to find the right number of stars for this read because a good one but it lacked entertainment and it also wasn't a book I wanted to read for hours and hours. Still it was a book I wanted to read, I cared for the characters, I wanted to know everyone would be alright in the end. Plus, a lot of the story resonated in me. 

3.5 rounded up to 4.

The publisher calls it a slow-burn romance and in some aspects that's true. But that's not the first thing that comes to mind looking back. Ingrid is trying to find her way in a relationship that has stalled, so her boyfriend suggests a-month away. He moves away and they get to enjoy life as a single. Ingrid is actually excited at first because now she can finally see how things will go with her crush from work, Macon. Except things don't really go anywhere, or rather, they go backward, and now she's lost her boyfriend and her good friend. 

I'm not super sure why the author felt the need to do all the swinging to get Ingrid away from her boyfriend for just a while, and maybe it could be that she writes by feeling. A lot of what Ingrid goes through are phases of breaking up after a life together without the grief of really losing that person forever. She'll try blind dating, the apps. It's very relatable if you don't count that deal. Meanwhile, I don't know if this deal of giving each other a month of being single made so much of a difference to the story. It was maybe just a detour. 

However, I enjoyed the detour. I enjoyed that the story took its time. That it didn't have that single focus of a goal and all the rest didn't count. And that's why I'm tagging it as a coming of age, despite the main character already being around 30 and this not being any close to a Young Adult book. 

If you like books you'll get just to see how the character is doing today instead of wanting to know the outcome, then this could be the read for you!

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 4 out of 5.