Maybe Once, Maybe Twice by Alison Rose Greenberg is a contemporary women’s fiction novel with romantic and humor elements (4/5 stars)

Maybe Once, Maybe Twice by Alison Rose Greenberg is a contemporary women’s fiction novel with romantic and humor elements.

Shout out to my local library, where I was able to pick up the audiobook version. The narrator Katherine Littrell does a pretty good job, including one point where she sings a little bit.

It took me a minute to get into this book, but it eventually hit its stride for me. It’s told in a very non-linear narrative with multiple flashbacks between our main character and the two main guys she made a marriage pact with at very different points in her life. This got a tad confusing to me even though each chapter header tells you what age Maggie is at that point.

The book leans more into chick lit than rom-com, because the focus is on our main character’s growth throughout her life (and especially in her 35th year) and how she processes trauma, while the many romances she finds herself part of are solidly present but not in the forefront. There are a LOT of heavy topics in this book, please check the CWs at the bottom of this review if you need them.

One of the strengths in this book is the diversity. Maggie is Jewish and has synesthesia (which is mentioned a few times and then mostly dropped), one of the main love interests was born in the Philippines, her best friend Summer (probably my favorite character) is a lesbian, and there’s tons more casual queerness throughout. I also laughed out loud several times, and I cried once, so it easily evoked tons of different emotions in me while I was reading.

As a very musical person, I appreciated all of the references in here. I have had Deanna Carter’s “Strawberry Wine” stuck in my head since I read that particular mention. If you were listening to music in the 90s and aughts, there will be a ton of callbacks here for you.

Overall, I think this needed another editing pass to tighten the story up a bit, but I still enjoyed the read. It was a little long and meandering at points, but you can see the strength and depth in many of the relationships here, including between Maggie and her best friend Summer. It sticks the landing pretty well, but I would have loved an epilogue.

Tropes in this book include: love triangle, second chance, friends to lovers, found family, angst, main characters in their mid-30s

CW: infertility, fertility treatments, rejection sensitive dysphoria, suicide (off-page, mentioned), infidelity, anxiety, panic attacks, PTSD, sexual assault, survivor’s guilt, depression, grief, absentee parent

I received a copy of this book to review. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Griffin. All opinions contained herein are my own.

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