I liked Alison Cochrun’s Here We Go Again is one of my favourite romance novels, so I was excited to pick up her newest. This one has a very romcom premise: when Sadie thinks the plane she is on is about to crash, she confesses to her seatmate that she thinks she’s a lesbian. Mal is supportive, holding her hand and talking her through his revelation, but it soon becomes obvious the plane isn’t going to crash, and Sadie is humiliated. Even more embarrassing is that she found herself on a Camino tour that’s meant to be exclusively for queer women—she’s not ready to take that leap out of the closet—and it just happens to be the same tour group that Mal is in. That setup feels like a Sophie Kinsella and Casey McQuiston mashup.
There’s a lot more going on than that, though. Sadie has been running her grandmother’s failing antique store since she passed away, and it’s a gruelling project to try to keep it afloat. Her mother and sister aren’t much help: she practically raised her younger sister while their mother was struggling with her mental health. Now, her sister travels the world as a plus-sized fashion influencer, leaving Sadie with all the hard work of the family business. To make matters worse, the two of them keep setting Sadie up with guys. It’s only recently that she’s begun to question whether the reason that they never go anywhere is because she’s a lesbian. When her sister injures herself and is unable to go on the Camino tour she booked, Sadie volunteers to take her place, hoping it will give her some space to sort out her life.
Mal also wants find some clarity on the Camino, though this isn’t her first time walking it. In fact, she’s the daughter of one of the most powerful businessmen in Portugal. When she came out as a young person, he rejected her for not fitting the image he wanted for his family. Now, he’s dead, and she’s inherited a fortune and leadership of the wine business. She has no idea how to handle this, so she does what she always does: runs. Her usual coping strategy is passionate and short-lived romances in different locales, but she’s determined to quash that urge this time around. No matter how cute her seatmate with freckles is.
As the two of them walk the Camino, sparks fly, and Sadie is excited to explore genuine attraction after being mired in compulsory heterosexuality her life up to this point. Mal doesn’t want to give into bad habits, but it keeps getting harder. She’s acting as Sadie’s tour guide to queerness, teaching her how to have a delayed lesbian adolescence. Which… can include kissing lessons, right?
Despite the Camino setting and the romance plot, this is more of an internal journey. Both Sadie and Mal are trying to figure out what to do with their lives and dealing with grief. While they help each other, most of the work is done on their own.
Sadie is still questioning her sexuality. While she confesses at the beginning to thinking she’s a lesbian, she’s not entirely sure. Even when she becomes more confident, she’s also angry that it’s taken her so long. She feels like she’s lost so much time. She keeps thinking, “Wouldn’t I have known before now?” Her sister is bisexual; Sadie knows her family would be supportive. So why did she force herself to date men for decades? I’ve seen a few stories like this recently, and I think they’re much needed. We think of coming out as happening in your teens or twenties, but that’s not true of everyone, and it’s not just in situations where coming out is unsafe. When you live in a society that presumes everyone is straight and cis, it’s easy to be convinced that you must be, too. Sadie goes through a kind of grief for her younger self who didn’t get to have a queer adolescence.
As Mal helps Sadie through her journey to self-acceptance, she avoids facing the issues looming large in her life—until she crashes headlong into them. She has practical concerns, like what to do with the business, but also more abstract ones, like how to grieve for someone she still feels so much anger towards, how to deal with her abandonment issues, and what she should do with her life from here. As both Sadie and Mal grapple with their big questions, they move towards becoming the people that can be in a relationship together.
One thing Alison Cochrun does very well is include side characters who feel like real people, even if they don’t get a lot of time on the page. The Camino tour group all feel like they’re living their own plot, and I always appreciate seeing queer community like this. As for the setting, I was hoping for a little more of what I got from Casey McQuiston’s The Pairing. Although the trail is obviously mentioned a lot, I didn’t feel transported there.
I am also a little disappointed by the cover on this one, because Sadie is described as fat, and she even addresses some unintentional fatphobia from Mal. But you can’t tell that she’s fat from the cover, especially because her body is partially hidden behind a table. That feels like a missing opportunity, since both Sadie and her sister see their fat bodies as neutral, not shameful, and I would have liked to see that fat representation on the cover.
I think fans of Kiss Her Once For Me will like this one. In fact, there’s a shared side character between the two! My favourite Alison Cochrun novel is still Here We Go Again, but I still had a good time reading Every Step She Takes, and I look forward to her next romance.
