Review: "Almost Life" by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Published March 2026 via S&S/Summit Books
★★★★

When Erica and Laure meet in a sweltering Paris summer, it's a blip in their lives—until it isn't. That blip becomes a hookup, becomes a romance, unspools into something all-consuming. But Erica is only in France for the summer, and it's 1978, and being together requires a series of choices that Erica knows will upset the direction of her life. So she goes back to England—but that's really only the beginning.

She knew she could not live how Laure and her friends lived, at the edge of things, even in Paris. [...] She didn't want to exist like that. She wanted to get married, to have children. She wanted to write novels [...]. She wanted simple joy, simple happiness, simple love. And loving Laure, even if she were a man, would not be simple. (loc. 1123*)

Erica and Laure make for such messy, complex characters—maybe at the beginning one seems more straightforward than the other, or more confident in herself, but as time goes on the lines blur. They drink too much; they make bad decisions; they make good decisions; they have friends and lovers and dramas; some of their sharp edges blur into something more palatable and some of their more endearing personality traits wither over time. For Laure in some ways the question of their relationship is simpler; she is already entrenched in queer (though they would not use the term then) life in Paris, and when Erica dreams of them being together, it is back in Paris. Laure has already set aside a need for convention. But for Erica, in the 70s and 80s and beyond...she can see multiple paths, and multiple paths that would bring her joy. Some of them are easier than others.

I'm good at forgetting the book description by the time I read a book I'm interested in, so I didn't realize right away just how much time this would cover. Theirs is not a quick story, over in a summer—theirs is one of those relationships that pulls you in and spits you back out and you wonder, time and time again, if that was the one who got away...or rather, you know that was the one who got away. And what's left is what to do with that knowledge. Very much recommended to anyone with a queer one who got away and to lovers of character-driven stories.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

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