Can you do me a solid? Just one little favor, a quick errand. It won’t take long. You can do it next time you’re out, in fact. Consider it your good deed for the day, if it makes you feel better. A mitzvah. An indulgence to a fellow human. As in the new novel, “Here We Go Again” by Alison Cochrun, think of it as a life-changing thing.
She couldn’t remember the woman’s first name.
Did Logan Maletis really ever know it? Everybody at her job — administration, students, other teachers — called everyone else by their last name so the colleague she’d been hooking up with for weeks was just “Schaffer.” Whatever, Logan didn’t care and she wasn’t cold-hearted but when Savannah broke up with her in public, she did wonder if maybe, possibly, the awful names she called Logan were fair or true.
Rosemary Hale would have agreed with every single last one of those nasty names.
Once, she and Logan were BBFs but after a not-so-little incident happened the summer they were 14, she hated Logan with a white-hot passion. Every time Rosemary ran into Logan at school, she regretted that they worked in the same place. Seeing her old nemesis, even just once in a while, was an irritation she could barely stand.
They had nothing in common at all, except Joseph Delgado.
He’d been their English teacher years ago, and they both followed in his footsteps. He kept them from going stir-crazy in their small Oregon town. He was friend, father figure and supporter for each of them when they separately came to understand that they were lesbians.
They loved Joe. They’d do anything for him.
Which is why he had one favor to ask…
With a recent diagnosis of incurable cancer, Joe didn’t want to die surrounded by hospital walls. Would Logan and R o s ema r y drive him and his dog to Maine, to a cabin he owned? Would they spend time crammed sideby- side in a used van with a gay logo, keeping Joe alive, coast-to-coast? Could they do it without screaming the whole way?
Can you avoid laughing at this convoluted, but very funny story? Highly unlikely, because “Here We Go Again” takes every nightmare you’ve ever had of busted friendship, bad vacations and long-lost love, and it makes them hilarious.
It’s not the story that does it, though. The story’s a bit too long and it can drag, but author Alison Cochrun’s characters are perfectly done, each one of them. Logan is profane in all the right ways and yes, she’s a jerk but an appealing one. Rosemary is too prim, too proper, too straight-laced, but Cochrun lets her be unlaced in a steamy passage that’s not misplaced. You’ll love how this story moves along (although sometimes slowly!) and you’ll love how it ends.
If you’ve ever endured a cross-country trip stuffed in the back seat of a hot car for miles and miles, sharing a seat with an abrasive sibling, this is your book. “Here We Go Again” is a solid vacation read.
— The Bookworm Sez
