didn't we almost have it all?

When Emma Townsend shows up at her best friend Sybil's wedding weekend, she’s all about keeping her eyes on the prize. All that matters to her is giving her friend the wedding she’d been dreaming of. But when she went looking for the traditional tequila shots for the four besties—Sybil, Nikki, Willow, and Emma—Emma finds something she had not been expecting. Finn Hughes is there.

Finn was Emma’s best friend in high school. They were on debate team together and would spend the road trips to debates talking and laughing. Emma wanted to be more than friends with Finn, but she didn’t feel like she could trust him.

They almost went to prom together, but Finn didn’t show to pick Emma up. One summer they almost hooked up, but they were interrupted. Years later, when Emma was living in New York and Finn was in town, they spent a beautiful evening up Emma’s building’s rooftop, and they almost spent the night together. but they stopped, because Emma was seeing someone else. Almost, almost, almost. And now he’s barging in on their bachelorette evening before all the wedding guests show up and the weekend of festivities begin.

But Emma is less angry that Finn is there the next day, when Emma goes back to the room after her run and finds that Sybil is missing, along with her luggage. Emma ditches the plans for a spa day to try to track down the runaway bride, and she enlists Finn and his Porsche. They head to San Diego, to a spa she frequents, but there they find out that she’s headed for Las Vegas next.

As Emma and Finn bounce from one place to another to try to find the bride, they revisit old feelings. The attraction grows between them, but Emma can’t help but also revisit the old hurts, the secrets Finn kept from her, the prom she missed with no explanation from him. Will this finally give them the chance to turn all their almosts into something real? Or are the mistakes too much for them to get past?

Mistakes We Never Made is Hannah Brown’s debut novel. Fans of reality television might recognize her from The Bachelorette, Dancing with the Stars, or Fox’s Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test. Her memoir God Bless This Mess was a New York Times bestseller. Now she’s trying her hand at fiction, and has crafted a road trip romance of missed starts, new perspectives, forgiveness, and fresh starts.

There are so many solid romance tropes here that I was sucked in by the description. Friends-to-lovers? Check. A runaway bride? Check. A road trip chasing down said bride? Check. Sounds like lots of fun. And Mistakes We Never Made is a lot of fun. To me, it felt just a little unbalanced though. The bulk of the story is about the choices Emma made through the years that made her see her relationships a certain way. Through the story, she gets a wider perspective on herself and her relationships that means things will be different for her moving forward. I didn’t see that same sort of transformation for Finn or for Sybil, so the story felt to me like Emma was the only one doing the emotional work of being a better friend. Maybe Brown is planning a follow-up book that tells Sybil’s story (which I do think would help), but at the end of this book, the overall story still feels a little unfinished.

That being said, I still think Mistakes We Never Made is a fun book to read. I read it quickly, as it was so bingeable. There is a lot of humor and some spicy moments and enduring friendships. There are some fun surprises and viral videos and a flying burrito, and I would recommend adding this one to your summer reading TBR, as it would be a really good pool read with your favorite tasty beverage nearby.

Egalleys for Mistakes We Never Made were provided by Forever through NetGalley, with many thanks.