Everything After

January 18, 2021
A woman must choose between two men—one who reminds her of long-forgotten dreams and another who sees her for the accomplished woman she’s grown to be—in this profound contemporary romance from Santopolo (More Than Words). New York City therapist Emily Gold and her husband, Ezra, are cautiously optimistic when they discover that Emily is pregnant with their long-awaited first child. But when Emily miscarries, Ezra can’t bear to face his grief and throws himself into his work, leaving Emily to deal with her own despair alone. What Ezra doesn’t know is that Emily miscarried once before, 13 years ago in an accident that also ended her promising music career and relationship with her college boyfriend, Rob Barnes. As Emily works through her trauma, she hears Rob’s new song on the radio and realizes that it’s about her. The pair reconnect and Emily rediscovers her passion for music—but can she find a way to mesh her past dreams with her present reality? Santopolo crafts an unconventional but realistic love triangle by celebrating her characters’ flaws and grounding the story in earnest emotion. This moving tale is sure to entice. Agent: Miriam Altshuler, DeFiore and Company.

March 1, 2021
In Santopolo's latest (after More Than Words, 2019), Emily Gold is a psychologist with a fulfilling practice, married to Ezra, a compassionate pediatric oncologist. They live in a lovely Manhattan apartment and are preparing to expand their family. Emily's feelings about getting pregnant now are mixed with her feelings about a pregnancy thirteen years earlier, when she was a college student and musician on the cusp of success playing gigs with her talented boyfriend. Told in chapters that alternate between college Emily's journal and grown-up Emily's thoughts, the narrative reveals more about Emily's past than even her husband knows. A challenging week for her marriage, with problems at home and work, coincides with the appearance of her college boyfriend on the hit music charts (and a local performance), compelling Emily to question the decisions she made then and is making now. Life, love, and loss are themes throughout both timelines. Offer this to fans of women's stories like those by Rebecca Serle and Taylor Jenkins Reid, readers who appreciate a good "what if . . . ?" and those who like interpersonal drama set in New York City.

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March 15, 2021
When a young woman's marriage hits a road bump, she reconnects with a long-lost love and wonders whether she followed the wrong path into her adulthood. Emily Gold has a handsome husband and a successful therapy practice at NYU. What she wants now is a baby. After a couple of years of marriage, her husband, Ezra, a respected pediatric oncologist, is finally ready to start trying. Unfortunately, it takes several months to conceive, and shortly after they do, Emily miscarries. The miscarriage awakens Emily's memories of a miscarriage she suffered more than a decade earlier when she was in college and deeply in love with a man named Rob. Rob and Emily were part of a band, and they delighted in performing together. After the college miscarriage, Emily distanced herself from not only Rob, but also her own musical ambitions. Now that she's lost another baby and her husband refuses to grieve with her, Emily starts missing Rob and the person she was when she was with him. It's particularly difficult for Emily to forget Rob now that he's finally had success as a musician; she hears his voice whenever she turns on the radio. Emily tracks him down so they can explore whether they gave up on their relationship too soon. Once Emily begins spending time with Rob again, she wonders if Ezra will try to fight for her and whether that's even what she wants. Told primarily in the third person, the book is interspersed with first-person journal entries from earlier in Emily's life. Most of the story occurs in New York, and Santopolo paints vivid pictures of city sights and West Village hot spots while, in the college flashbacks, she deftly captures the passion that can pervade early adulthood as well as the nostalgia that follows those intense experiences. Despite a few scenarios that strain credulity, like a therapy patient whose personal circumstances too perfectly mimic what could have happened to Emily, the book is consistently entertaining. More than just a love triangle, the story explores difficult topics ranging from grief and loss to self-doubt and suicide. An often melancholy but romantic tale about the importance of compromise and growth in relationships.

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