Here We Go Again Review: Alison Cochrun Lambda Winner

Verdict: A Lambda-winning road-trip romance that handles a dying mentor and two women who ruined each other’s lives with real weight, undercut by a verbal tic almost every reader mentions.

Best for: Readers who want a romcom that is actually about grief, enemies who were once best friends, and an ADHD and anxiety portrait that is affectionate rather than diagnostic.

Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — romance.io’s “open door”, though in practice one brief scene)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.0/5 — a 4.04 Goodreads average across 19,465 ratings, and 93% of StoryGraph readers marking it emotional)

Tropes: Enemies to lovers, childhood best friends, second chance, forced proximity, road trip, found family, dying mentor, grumpy sunshine, dual POV, HEA.

Here We Go Again is Alison Cochrun’s third novel, a standalone contemporary romance published by Atria Books on 2 April 2024, running from a small town in Washington State across the country to Bar Harbor, Maine in a failing van, and built on the collision between Logan Maletis and Rosemary Hale — childhood best friends who became each other’s worst enemy, now teaching at the same high school they attended, and jointly responsible for driving their dying favourite teacher home.

It holds a 4.04 average across 19,465 Goodreads ratings and a 4.17 across 9,170 StoryGraph reviews, and it won the 2025 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Romance, with starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. The averages sit on top of a split that is unusually easy to describe, because almost everyone who complains complains about the same running joke. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is Here We Go Again About?

This is contemporary romance shelved as a romcom and structured as a grief novel, and getting that straight in advance matters more here than with almost any other book on our list. The cover is bright, the marketing is chipper, and one professional reviewer said outright that she wished it were not, because the story revolves around death. What you actually get is a terminal cancer diagnosis, a hospice road trip, an AIDS-epidemic memory carried by an older gay man, and a romance that has to grow in the gaps between all of that.

Logan is introduced through avoidance: a substitute teacher who drinks too much, sleeps around, deflects everything with a joke and has never once been asked to be responsible for anything. Rosemary is introduced through control — rigid, over-prepared, engaged to someone tidy, and quietly miserable. They were inseparable until they were seventeen. The novel runs in third person past tense across both viewpoints, and unusually the viewpoints alternate inside chapters rather than between them, which keeps both women present in scenes where one of them is being unbearable.

What Makes This Sapphic Road-Trip Romance Work

Joe: The dying English teacher is the most-praised element by a distance, and readers cite him even inside negative reviews. His end-of-life arc, and his memory of the epidemic, are what give the book its spine.
Grief with actual weight: 93% of StoryGraph readers mark the book emotional and 61% sad — the highest emotional score on our entire sapphic fiction list. Readers report crying, repeatedly and specifically.
Neurodivergence written with affection: The ADHD and anxiety portrayals are explicitly pro-therapy, and reviewers with lived experience call them accurate rather than decorative.
Character work: 94% of StoryGraph readers report strong character development, the highest figure on our list.
The road trip: A structure that forces two people who cannot stand each other into a van, with landscape writing good enough that readers report looking up RV rentals.

Book Synopsis

Logan Maletis and Rosemary Hale grew up next door to each other, spent every day together until they were seventeen, and then did something to each other that neither has forgiven. Seventeen years later they both teach at their old high school in a small Washington town, and they have organised their entire adult lives around not being in the same room.

The one thing they still share is Joe, the English teacher who took them both in when their own houses were unbearable. When Joe’s cancer stops responding to treatment, he asks for one thing: to go home to Bar Harbor, Maine, and to be driven there by the two of them, in a van, together.

So they go. Three thousand miles, one dog, a vehicle that keeps breaking, and a man in the back who has decided this is the last useful thing he will do. The question the book spends its second half on is not whether Logan and Rosemary will crack. It is what they actually did to each other at seventeen, and whether two people who have spent half their lives being someone else’s disappointment can survive being loved on purpose.

My Review

Joe is the reason this book works, and Cochrun knows it. He is not a saintly dying mentor dispensing wisdom — he is funny, manipulative in a benevolent way, occasionally cruel about their cowardice, and entirely clear-eyed about what is happening to him. The decision to give him a memory of the AIDS epidemic does something quietly enormous: it puts the two women’s fear of being known next to a man who watched an entire generation of people be known and die for it, and it never states the comparison out loud. That restraint is the best writing in the book.

The second strength is the neurodivergence, which is handled as character rather than as content. Logan’s ADHD is why she is late, why she deflects, why she cannot finish anything, and why she is the person you want in a crisis; Rosemary’s anxiety is why she over-prepares and why she is engaged to someone she does not love. Neither is a quirk and neither is a problem to be cured, and the book is openly, unfashionably in favour of therapy. Readers who share those diagnoses say so in review after review, which is the only endorsement that counts here.

Where it struggles is a single running joke, and I want to be clear about the scale of this, because it is the most unanimous complaint I have seen on any book in this batch. Logan swears using the names of famous queer women — Demi fucking Lovato, Janelle fucking Monáe — constantly, including inside the scenes where Joe is dying. The mechanism is straightforward: a bit that is funny twice is deployed a hundred times, and it punctures the grief beats it lands in. Readers who gave the book two stars name it first, readers who gave it four and a half stars still name it, and one professional-tier reviewer called it fun once and then quickly repetitive. Stacked on that are two secondary problems the three-star reviews return to: two women in their mid-thirties who frequently read as teenagers, and a conflict engine that is largely repeated miscommunication — the same avoidance, restaged.

The expectation worth resetting is the packaging, and one reviewer put it better than I can: this is given romcom branding when it is much deeper, with a cover that presents a chipper scene for a story heavily about death. If you want a light read, calibrate hard — a main character dies on the page. If you were put off by the bright cover, know that the book underneath it is serious. There is also a real dissent about the ending: most readers take it as an HEA, but at least one reviewer argued it lands as a question mark rather than a happy-ever-after or even a happy-for-now, so go in knowing the resolution is emotional rather than tidy.

My honest note: A four-and-a-half-star grief novel with a running gag stapled to it, and how much that gag costs you is the entire question. If you can hear the joke and let it pass, this is one of the most emotionally serious romances on our list; if a verbal tic can pull you out of a deathbed scene, it will.

Element	In Here We Go Again
Central relationship	Logan Maletis & Rosemary Hale — childhood best friends turned enemies, teaching at their own old school
Core tropes	Enemies to lovers, second chance, forced proximity, road trip, found family, dying mentor, grumpy sunshine
Setting	A small town in Washington State, then a cross-country van trip to Bar Harbor, Maine
Heat level	3/5 — romance.io’s “open door”, though reviewers report a single brief scene
Series	Standalone — complete, nothing further required
Content notes	On-page death of a main character from terminal cancer, hospital and hospice scenes, alcoholism and a parent with alcoholism, parental abandonment, panic attacks, AIDS-epidemic references, drinking and marijuana use, brief homophobia, transphobia and racism, on-page sex

How Spicy Is Here We Go Again?

A 3/5, and the sources need reconciling. romance.io files it as “open door” and Cochrun’s own content list confirms on-page sex, but reviewers who count scenes report a single brief one, and at least one romance-specific site rates the spice outright as low. The honest synthesis is that this is an open-door book with a closed-door texture: the intimacy is real and on the page, and there is very little of it. StoryGraph’s community warnings do not put sexual content in any tier, which supports the lower reading.

The element worth flagging in advance is not sexual at all. A main character dies on the page from cancer, with hospital and hospice scenes, and Cochrun publishes that warning herself. Alcoholism — both a protagonist’s drinking and a parent’s — is the other content readers most often want to know about in advance. No reviewer flags any kink. For the same band on this site, Perfect Rhythm sits at 3/5 with a comparable single-scene structure, and Fingersmith is the historical equivalent.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a romance that takes death seriously, you like enemies who have real history rather than a misunderstanding, you want ADHD and anxiety written from the inside, and you are happy for the emotional centre of a love story to be somebody else entirely.

You may want to skip it if: a constantly repeated verbal gag will wear you down, thirty-somethings behaving like teenagers frustrates you, repeated miscommunication as the main obstacle bores you, or you are not up for a main character dying on the page.

In short: the most emotionally serious romance on this list, wearing the wrong cover and telling the same joke too many times.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

The big development since publication is straightforward: in October 2025 this won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Romance, beating a finalist field that included Jae. That is the strongest award credential of any contemporary romance on our list, and it has changed how the book gets recommended — it now arrives with a stamp rather than as one more spring romcom. It was not, despite the visibility, a Goodreads Choice Awards nominee in any category, and no adaptation has been announced. Cochrun has since published Every Step She Takes. What drives ongoing readership is word of mouth built almost entirely around one line: it is the one where you cry.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Joe comes first and comes up most, cited even by readers who disliked the book. Second is the grief itself — readers describe ugly crying with a consistency I have not seen anywhere else in this batch, and StoryGraph’s 93% emotional and 61% sad back that up. Third is the ADHD and anxiety representation, praised as accurate and explicitly pro-therapy by readers who share those diagnoses. Fourth is the road trip and the landscape writing; the New York Times Book Review line about weeping while looking up RV rentals is the version everyone quotes. Fifth is the found family and the intergenerational queerness, especially Joe’s memory of the epidemic. Sixth is the dual-narrator audiobook. The minority view worth flagging cuts against the pacing complaint: a real contingent argue the miscommunication is not a plot device but an accurate portrait of two avoidant people, and that expecting them to simply talk is missing what the book is about.

What readers argue about and complain about: The celebrity-name swearing, above everything, and it is close to unanimous — it appears in two-star reviews, in three-star reviews and in four-and-a-half-star reviews alike. The mechanism is repetition inside tonal mismatch: a gag that works once is used relentlessly, including in scenes about a man dying, so it deflates the exact beats the book is built on. Second is that both leads read as adolescent despite being in their thirties, with one reviewer noting the personality of a thirteen-year-old boy and another saying she needed only to not actively want the characters to fall off a cliff. Third is repetitive miscommunication as the whole conflict engine — the same avoidance restaged rather than escalated. Fourth is a crude register that clashes with the grief material for some readers. Fifth, and the most interesting: a slice of readers report feeling emotionally disconnected despite the subject matter, and that Joe outshines the couple so completely that the romance becomes the least engaging thread in its own book. That last objection has a professional version too — one reviewer said plainly that she failed to see the two as a romantic pairing and that the romantic plot took a back seat to the journey with Joe. The genuine split is over the ending: most readers call it an HEA, one reviewer called it neither an HEA nor even an HFN, and the difference comes down to how much certainty you need in a final chapter.

The standalone question worth asking first: It is a complete standalone with no series, no sequel and nothing outstanding, and the romance resolves within its own covers. If it works for you, Cochrun’s catalogue is the natural next step — The Charm Offensive and Kiss Her Once for Me precede it, and Every Step She Takes follows — and the useful thing to know is that this is the one that won the Lammy, so treat the others as more of the voice rather than as an escalation. If the celebrity-swearing tic is what put you off, be aware that a distinctive verbal register is a Cochrun signature rather than a one-book experiment.

The audiobook is a dual production, with Natalie Naudus reading Logan and Jeremy Carlisle Parker reading Rosemary, running 12 hours 28 minutes from Simon & Schuster Audio — and the split cast helps considerably with a book whose two viewpoints alternate inside chapters.

Prefer audio? Listen to Here We Go Again on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Here We Go Again have a happy ending?

Yes for the couple, though not without loss — a main character dies on the page. Most readers read the final chapters as a full HEA; at least one reviewer argued it lands closer to an open question, so expect emotional resolution rather than a tidy one.

How explicit is it?

A 3/5 by romance.io’s rating, but reviewers who count report a single brief scene and one romance site rates the spice as low. The author confirms on-page sex; there is simply not much of it.

Does someone die in this book?

Yes. Joe, the mentor at the centre of the story, dies of cancer on the page, and there are hospital and hospice scenes. Cochrun publishes that content warning herself.

Is it really a romcom?

It is marketed as one and it is genuinely funny, but the subject is grief. One reviewer specifically criticised the chipper cover for misrepresenting a story that revolves around death, and that is a fair warning.

Did Here We Go Again win any awards?

Yes — the 2025 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Romance, announced in October 2025. It was not a Goodreads Choice Awards nominee.

Is there an audiobook?

Yes, with a split cast — Natalie Naudus as Logan and Jeremy Carlisle Parker as Rosemary, running 12 hours 28 minutes.

If You Loved Here We Go Again, Read These Next

Try Delilah Green Doesn’t Care for the same small-town found-family warmth with more heat and less grief; Perfect Rhythm for another return-to-hometown romance built around a parent’s illness at the same restrained heat; and Atmosphere if what you want is a sapphic love story that makes you cry on purpose. More in Contemporary Lesbian Romance and across our Book Reviews.

The Bottom Line

Here We Go Again set out to write a romcom that could hold a death, and three things carry it: a mentor whose end-of-life arc is the best thing in the book, grief that 93% of readers register as genuinely emotional, and neurodivergent characters written with affection rather than diagnosis. Three things hold it back: a celebrity-swearing gag deployed until it deflates the scenes it lands in, two leads in their thirties who often read seventeen, and a conflict that restages the same avoidance rather than escalating it. If you want a romance with real weight and you can live with the joke, it earned its Lambda. Check Here We Go Again on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

We rank Here We Go Again at 4.0/5 — the most emotionally serious contemporary romance on this list, undercut by one joke it could not stop telling.