She erased their past. He’s rewriting their future.

When Landon receives a letter from Rose—the woman he once planned forever with—he learns their love story is over. She’s undergone a radical memory-erasing treatment, leaving behind her grief, her past… and him. But Landon can’t bear to lose the love of his life. If she fell for him once, couldn’t she fall for him again?

Now living in Edinburgh, Rose’s world is a blank canvas, and she’s dating someone new. When Landon reenters her life as a stranger, they become fast friends, their lives entwining once more. But what Rose doesn’t know is that this new friend carries the weight of everything they once shared: their firsts, their marriage, and the heartbreak they barely survived. And when she starts exhibiting strange symptoms, it becomes clear their history isn’t gone—it’s just buried. And remembering could come at a devastating cost.

Told in alternating timelines—his from the present, hers from the past—The Good Parts is an achingly poignant story about the people we become across a lifetime, and the beauty of finding our way with what remains.

I went into this one expecting a light and touching second chance romance. What I did not expect was to be completely gutted by the end of it.

Rose and Landon meet in college, date and fall in love. Years later, Rose has taken a pill to erase her memories. She’s not had the happiest life and after one too many heartbreaks, she’d had enough. Now she’s living in Edinburgh with no memory of her old life, starting completely over. But Landon still loves Rose and will do anything to get her back. So he travels to Edinburgh where Rose is living and working and dating someone new. Will she fall for Landon all over again when she “meets” him, or are they done forever?

I loved that the author chose to give us alternating chapters from Rose and Landon’s POV. Rose’s chapters begin in the past, before she and Landon ever met, allowing us to see their relationship from the beginning. Landon’s chapters are set in the present, after Rose has already taken the pill that erased all of her memories. We bounce back and forth in time until the timelines finally converge.

I’ll be honest, I spent a good portion of the early part of this book feeling a little creeped out by Landon. I kept thinking he was your typical, creepy guy who can’t take a hint, and now he’s going to maneuver his way back in and push her to fall in love with him all over again. It felt very creepy and manipulative at first, but as more information is shared, we learn what really happened. The reason Rose made this choice, and the full picture of what their relationship actually went through, is not what I assumed going in.

Both characters are really well drawn. Rose is flawed, but likeable and watching her navigate this new life while something in her mind keeps pulling at the edges when it comes to Landon was one of the more compelling parts of the book. Landon is harder to like early on (for reasons mentioned earlier) but Normandin gives him enough vulnerability that even if I did find him sort of creepy at first, I was still somewhat rooting for him.

By the time I got to the ending, I was all kinds of choked up. It didn’t go the direction I thought it was heading, which I absolutely loved. And even with the “taking a pill to erase your memories” element (which obviously edges into speculative territory) the book never felt like it was leaning into sci-fi. It stayed grounded throughout, and I never found myself doubting the validity of the pill. This isn’t your standard romance, and that’s exactly what made it work so well for me. There were surprises throughout that I didn’t see coming, and I appreciated every one of them. And that ending. Wow. Not at all what I was expecting. I loved it.

If you like your love stories complicated, with real history and real consequences behind them, this one is absolutely worth your time.

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