For readers of David Nicholls and Sally Rooney comes a new love story that’s at once tender and electrifying—told by everyone but the main characters.

When Clara and Seb first cross paths in a London square, it’s the start of something exciting. Clara, an aspiring director stuck in an entry-level job, itches to pick up a camera. Seb, having floated between music, modeling, and now acting, struggles to find purpose in his work. Yet as random chance brings the two back together, time and time again, neither could predict that their magnetic connection is set to change their lives.

But everyone else does. The spark between Clara and Seb is exactly what falling in love should look exhilarating, passionate, undeniable. The two become a whirlwind, their relationship enthralling everyone they come across. But as the years go on and tensions flair, a last-ditch attempt to save their great romance ends with a gut-wrenching betrayal.

Set over the course of two decades, Clara and Seb’s love story is bigger than just themselves. Told from the eyes of their audience—friends and flatmates, rivals and lovers, strangers and confidants—Main Characters is a sweeping portrait of all sides of Clara and Seb. Everyone has their version of events, but only the main characters can decide how it ends.

I gotta be honest. I’m a little on the fence with this one. I liked the idea, but I’m not sure it totally worked.

Clara is an aspiring director currently stuck in an entry level job, desperate to actually pick up a camera and start making the type of movie she is passionate about. Seb has drifted between music, modeling, and now acting, never quite landing on anything that gives him a sense of purpose. The two of them keep crossing paths through what seems like pure coincidence, and eventually that connection turns into a relationship that seems promising. Over the following two decades, their romance goes through several ups and downs, and a final attempt to save what they have ends in a betrayal that changes everything.

The whole story gets filtered through the people around them, be it people they actually know (friends, enemies, acquaintances), and even strangers who happened to be nearby at the right moment, but we never hear from Clara and Seb themselves. On one hand, I really liked the idea. It felt genuinely inventive to watch this entire relationship unfold entirely through outside perspectives. That structural choice is a clever way to show how a relationship looks different depending on who’s watching it.

The problem is that same structure ended up creating too much distance between me and the characters. I wanted to be more invested in Clara and Seb’s lives, but that’s a hard thing to pull off when you never actually hear from either of them directly. Everything is filtered through someone else’s interpretation, and by the end I realized I didn’t know either of them nearly as well as I wanted to. I think what would have really cemented this book for me is getting at least one chapter told directly from Clara and Seb’s own perspectives near the end, even just briefly, to finally hear their side after two decades of everyone else’s version of events. But, without that, I never fully connected with either of them. And I’ll be honest–I didn’t like Clara much at all for most of the book, and I really wanted a chance to get inside her head and understand what was actually driving her.

So, yeah, this is a genuinely clever concept, and I did enjoy the story, I just wanted to feel more than I actually did by the end. If you’re drawn to inventive narrative structures and don’t mind staying at arm’s length from the central couple the whole way through, this is worth picking up.

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