Someday Maybe by Ophelia London

The Basics:
Someday Maybe by Ophelia London
Entangled: Embrace
Book 2 in the Definitely Maybe series
New Adult, Romance
Published October 20, 2014
Source: Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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Why I picked up this book:

I really liked the first book in the series.

Blurb:

Some guys are impossible to forget.

Rachel Daughtry has a 10-year plan that leaves no room for mistakes. Or not-so-serious boys—including Oliver Wentworth, the freshman boyfriend she's never forgotten. Now she's back in San Francisco with an awesome-slash-scary new job. Unfortunately, The Plan doesn't cover things like meeting her best friend's new “secret” guy...Oliver.

Fortunately, no one knows that Rachel and Oliver were ever together, and endless bikini wax torture couldn't make Rachel hurt her friend. But it's killing Rachel. She's not over him. Not even a little. And as her 10-year-plan crumbles around her, Rachel realizes that maybe—just maybe—Oliver feels the same way.

Now Rachel is on the verge of losing all control. And her best friend. And the love of her life...

My thoughts:

I cannot talk about Someday Maybe without talking about the first book in the series. I loved Definitely, Maybe in Love when I read it last year. I love Pride and Prejudice and I thought London's adaptation was excellent.

Unfortunately for Someday Maybe, I've never read Persuasion, which I gather is Austen's tale of love lost and found again. So it didnt come with that added boost of joy as I compared storylines and anticipated moments and so forth.

So... Rachel and Oliver both seemed like pretty honest characters. Rachel had made some poor decisions and was trapped by them, but she didn't *want* to hurt anyone. She was also conscious of the fact that she'd kind of sucked when it came to handling Oliver and her relationship during freshman year, and that made me like her even more. Making a mistake and realizing you've made it and regretting it are all good character development things in my book.

Oliver was a bit harder to get a fix on, manly because I missed having Oliver's perspective - the back and forth of perspectives by chapter in so many new adult books has really spoiled me! Having to be more clever than our heroine and read into his actions? Geez! Maybe I'm becoming a lazy reader.... Regardless, he seemed like a good guy, and I'd kind of like to spend more time with him in future books in the series, to get to know him better.

One thing I didn't really buy into was the friendship with Meghan - Meghan didn't seem like a particularly great friend to me, and I was surprised by the lack of 'air-clearing' between these two. I'd like to think that such great friends would at least attempt to address things when things felt a little weird, right?

Now, story-wise (clearly secondary to characters for me), there's the present storyline and then flashbacks to tell us the story of Oliver and Rachel *before.* I did find that the flashbacks dragged a little - I didn't care so much exactly how things went down, as long as I had the gist of it. But I do think that overall, these bits were necessary to really develop the relationship between Oliver and Rachel in the present, so do power through them!

Bottom line:

Someday Maybe is a solid contemporary romance. It was a relief to read a new adult without the characteristic uber-angst - sometimes the parade of damaged characters in this genre can be exhausting! 

I can't really speak to it as an adaptation of Persuasion but I can say that overall, I found the book pretty entertaining!

4 stars
For fans of Ophelia London, new adult, contemporary romance, second chance at love stories.