Review: "Saturn Returning" by Kim Narby

Saturn Returning by Kim Narby
Published May 2025 via Bindery Books
★★★★

Trace and Silvia have built a happy life together in Seattle—they're living together, settled, engaged to be married. But then it all comes tumbling down.

The book pulls us between past and present: the present, when Silvia has fled Seattle for New York, where Jordan, their best friend from college—the third of their trio—lives. And the past, as they fall into each other's orbits at their small liberal arts college, come of age, start figuring out who they are. Trace and Silvia are a pair almost from the beginning, and Jordan brings a level of stability and outside perspective that balances the other two out.

It had always been like this with Silvia. She burned bright but went out fast. (loc. 2173*)

It takes a while to see where the book is going—or rather, it takes a while to see how they got where they are when the book opens. Trace and Silvia love each other fiercely, and yet...the shape of that love is not always what either person in the relationship wants. Trace clings, and tries to mold herself into the perfect partner, and sulks when she feels Silvia pulling away; Silvia pulls away and comes back, and keeps secrets, and finds Trace's insecurities and...not exploits them, maybe, but prods at them.

And honestly: That's what made the book. Trace and Silvia aren't always likeable (Jordan, while she of course has her own flaws, exhibits them in a less pointed way), but it's in a way that makes them interesting and human rather than unrelatable. All three have complicated family situations (some more so than others), and each of those situations also has its shades of gray. There was a while when I wondered whether one character was going to be the "bad guy" of the story, but the more I understood the characters and their histories, the hazier that all got, until nobody was the bad guy, and the question became Where do they go from here?

Messy and intense, in a way that makes me glad not to be in my 20s anymore...but also in a way that is very compelling to read.

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

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