One of my favorite recent sapphic romance series is Bryce Oakley’s Latitude and Longing series. These romances focus on a group of college best friends helping each other navigate life in their 30s. In One Last Run, Pete and Danica rekindle their college romance. In Shift the Tide, it’s Kiera and Izzy’s turn. After All closes out the trilogy by focusing on Maggie and her crumbling marriage with her wife Gwen. In doing so, readers are given an ambitious take on second chance romances that will make you both laugh and cry.
Maggie and Gwen are standing on the precipice of divorce. They are still living together, raising their kids together, and seeing a couple’s counselor, but nothing seems to be working. Maggie is ready to throw in the towel, but there’s just one problem: she can’t bring herself to tell her best friends. They are all madly in love and Maggie does not want to ruin that for them. So, when those friends invite Gwen to join the group on Pete and Danica’s bachelorette party weekend in Las Vegas, Maggie and Gwen are forced to play the happily married couple. It seems easy enough. But when old passions are rekindled in Sin City, the pair will be faced with a tough choice: to fight for what they once had or let their story end once and for all.
After All feels like an ambitious attempt to do something not often seen in second chance romances. The majority of these stories have their romantic heroines reuniting after years apart. Here, though, we’re dropped right into a relationship that is collapsing in real time. Overall, I think Bryce does a really good job here. She takes her time setting up the situation and letting the reader clearly see where Gwen and Maggie are before taking the Vegas trip. She also leaves plenty of room for the fallout of the trip and how that affects our heroines. Throughout all three acts of the story, readers are taken deep into the emotions of both protagonists, making the love between them and the hurt and distance that separates them abundantly clear. It’s a powerful mix of hope and resignation as possible moments of reconciliation, including some very steamy moments, are followed up by moments that remind the reader that passion alone will not solve their issues.
One thing that helps make the story work is the setting. Being surrounded by couples in love in a city known for its decadence all while having to pretend to be in love was a great choice. Gwen and Maggie are forced together and made to play happy couple, heightening the tension and yearning between them while never letting them off the hook.
In my reviews for One Last Run and Shift the Tide, I commented on how strong the characters and the dynamics between them are. I’m happy to report that After All continues that trend perfectly. The banter between the old college friends is hilarious and feels very true to life. Fans of the series will love getting to spend more time with this group. It was great getting to see more of Pete and Danica being completely head over heels for one another. It was a treat to see more of Kiera and Izzy as they move from the honeymoon phase of their relationship to the uncharted waters of engagement. I enjoyed seeing how all five women continue to support each other through everything going on in their lives all while being loveable chaos demons. I could read stories involving this group and their travels until the end of time.
One thing that did not work for me, though, was how little was done with Gwen’s part of the story. When it came to rebuilding their relationship, it felt like Gwen was being forced to do most of the work. I also feel like her wounds weren’t explored with as much time and care as Maggie’s were. Gwen is a workaholic who mistakenly believed that her worth in the relationship was her ability to provide. That’s a real issue to explore but wasn’t. It also felt like her trauma from the miscarriage and from seeing her wife lose her mom could have been explored as well. We see how much Maggie has struggled with these traumas and rightfully so. But speaking as a self-identified workaholic who has watched her wife go through major life-altering events and has gone to therapy, it’s not easy for the partner either. It would have benefited the story to see more of how those things affected Gwen’s.
Relatedly, I feel like more could have been done with Pete’s sister Lillian. She’s introduced as a flash point between Gwen and Maggie. She and Gwen, the two relative outsiders of the group, end up spending a good amount of time in Vegas together. There’s also hints of attraction between them. This leads to a couple of great moments of high drama between Gwen and Maggie (including some great angry sex), but it still felt lacking. The inclusion of Lillian could have been a moment of growth for Maggie and for Gwen, but we don’t get that. Lillian is also a promising character in her own right, so part of me just wants to see more of her.
Despite these two drawbacks, I still enjoyed After All. It’s an ambitious story about love, loss, and rediscovering what you once had that succeeds in most of what it tries to do. If you’re looking for a hilarious second chance romance with real drama, After All is a great choice. However, I would recommend reading the other two books in the series first. This series is one of those you can’t really skip around on.
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