Review: "Overdue" by Stephanie Perkins

Overdue by Stephanie Perkins
Published October 2025 via Saturday Books
★★★★

Ingrid has been stuck in somebody else's dream job for too long. (You might say she's overdue for a new job.) Her coworker Macon goes a long way to keeping that position tolerable—but Ingrid has never been able to act on her attraction, because she has a long-term boyfriend. But when Ingrid and her boyfriend Cory agree to take a month-long break, a hiatus to explore dating other people (which they both think is...overdue) before getting back together and planning their long-awaited (overdue?) wedding, it seems like the perfect chance to hook up with Macon.

One minor snag: Macon doesn't agree. And that complicates things.

I read all of Perkins' YA books back in the day, so I was eager to see what she'd do with an adult romance. This is both slow and lively: Overdue takes place over a year, and it's late in the book before Ingrid and Macon have a real conversation about their feelings and decide to give it a go; consequently, a lot of the book is about Ingrid dating around with other people, and figuring out next steps with her career, and building a stronger platonic friendship with Macon. It sounds like some of the career stuff might be inspired by Perkins' own trajectory, though of course I don't know how much of it.

Two favorite things about the book: first, there are no evil exes. I comment on this all the time when I read romance novels, so I know I'm a broken record here, but I love it when the ex is allowed to be, like...just a person. A good person, even! Just not the right person. Cory, Ingrid's boyfriend-turned-temporary-ex-turned-whatever could so easily be a cliché; instead, he's allowed to be a decent person and decent boyfriend who just isn't sure that this is the right relationship for him. He and Ingrid talk about their relationship and their break like the adults that they are, and when they get jealous or have questions they, well, talk it out. Macon's ex is a little less fleshed out, but she's not evil either—again, she's just not the right person for Macon. As ever, although this feels like a small thing, it does a lot of work to elevate the book. And the second, related thing: Ingrid does date around while on her break from Cory. Sometimes it's terrible one-off dates (I hope the more entertaining and less traumatic ones are pulled from real life), and sometimes things go further—and, again, it's not all smarmy assholes who are just after one thing. She meets good people and people she clicks with...and that doesn't mean it works out. Romance-novel heroines who get to date around in a way that is completely normal are freaking unicorns. (Weirdly, this was more common in 1960s romance...but I digress.)

All of this makes for a pretty slow burn, though. On the one hand I'm glad of it—I don't need (or want) a rapid-fire friends-to-lovers-in-under-two-weeks sort of thing. On the other hand I started wondering whether a plot point could be taken out to tighten the book somewhat. (Macon's mother, maybe? I get why she's there, and she adds a different dynamic to the relationship, but the stuff with his aunt might be enough.) I'm on the fence about the house makeover; part of it sounds delightful, but part of me thinks that it's a little...not red-flaggy, but yellow-flaggy for a friend you aren't actually all that close with yet to let you redo their house entirely in your style. (Also. This is neither here nor there, but the cupboards should have been white or wood, and the curtains should have been blue and white, dang it.)

At any rate, a nice shift to adult fiction—I'll be interested to see where Perkins goes next. I'm not quite sure where this lands for me on a no-half-stars scale, but let's call it 3.5 stars.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.