Given Our History

A tumultuous past full of friendship, first love, and heartbreak can’t stand in the way of the second chance presented to history professor Clara Fernsby when her estranged childhood best friend (and love of her life) Teddy Harrison is assigned to share an office with her while on a visiting professorship. While Clare tries to keep her distance and focus on preparing for her tenure case with a fundraising gala, Teddy has other plans, intentionally trying to spend more time with her. Although they haven’t spoken in a decade, their history pulls them together, and Miller (Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts) weaves in flashbacks to pivotal moments in their lives leading up to the estrangement—meeting each other, their long-distance history club, their first kiss, and their refusal to compromise their goals and careers. The sweet portrayals of friendship and how sometimes it’s the right person at the wrong time are the jewels of this otherwise fairly flat novel. The stakes for nearly everything feel tepid or glazed over, the pacing of both the plot and the narration is slow bordering on plodding, and many of the characters lack depth. Narrator Erin Bennett lends each character a distinct voice, although she doesn’t get to utilize them much, as Clara’s internal monologue takes up the majority of the novel.