Early Review: What If I Never Get Over You

What If I Never Get Over You by Paige Toon

Published By: Penguin
Publication Date: April 10, 2025
Date Read: March 24, 2025
Genre: Adult – Contemporary Romance
Source: ARC from Penguin
Format: Paperback
Pages: 416

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One Day meets a contemporary Bridgerton in this high-drama, escapist wonder of a love story, Paige Toon’s best yet.

Three days to fall in love. Six years to try to forget.

Ellie didn’t expect to fall in love while interrailing through Europe. But she also didn’t expect to meet a man like Ash. Three blistering days in Lisbon is all it takes to form an unforgettable connection—a bond deep enough for them to scrap their itineraries and plan to meet again in Spain. But Ellie arrives late, and Ash is nowhere to be found.

Six years later, Ellie has landed her dream job working as a gardener for a viscount and viscountess on their sprawling five-hundred-year-old estate in Wales. She finds peace amongst the towering topiary hedges and colorful gardens, but her idyll is shattered when Ash crashes back into her life. And when it becomes clear why he didn’t show in Madrid, her heart breaks anew—for what the truth means for her, and for his fate.

But they have never been able to resist each another, and when the sparks of their attraction fly, Ellie’s life will catch flame. She will have to make a choice.

There are no words to describe just how excited I was to get my hands of What If I Never Get Over You early. Paige Toon has been one of my all time favourite authors for the last decade, and I am always so excited to dive into her next book. Let me start this review by just clarifying some incorrect information I’ve seen on Goodreads and social media. I have seen so many comments about how this book is more YA than anything… absolute nonsense. The characters in What If I Never Get Over You are 21 when this book starts and then we see a 6 year time jump mid way through the book, which puts them at 27. It is NOT a YA book. The vast majority of Paige’s books are adult… they’re just not as spicy as some people may like this romance books to be.

What If I Never Get Over You was such a cute and moving story. It follows the story of Ellie who has gone travelling alone at 21. She is lonely and just about to call is quits when she meets the enigmatic Ash. She finds herself completely enamoured with him, and finds herself agreeing to continue travelling and to meet up with him in a few days… just for him not to show up. Six years later, she is still thinking about him and what happened to him that summer, just to find herself faced with him again. But will their spark reignite once more, or is their love story in the past?

I really enjoyed What If I Never Get Over You, however it is definitely not my favourite of Paige’s works. Once again, I found Paige’s writing so easy to fall into. I don’t know what it is about her, but I find all of her books so easy to read and I end up absolutely flying through them. The first 50-70% of this book was truly fantastic. I really enjoyed the characters of Ellie and Ash, and I was definitely routing for them to work things out. They did experience a little but of insta-love but honestly in this one it really didn’t bother me. I loved their connection, which was based on some shared trauma, and I really liked this hard hitting element to the book. Although it was insta-love I could absolutely understand how two people who had experienced what they had would connect so quickly.

My issues with the book came in at around the 70/75% mark. I don’t really know what happened but the ending of the book just seemed to suffer from some serious pacing issues. The pacing prior to this point was absolutely fine, but then it seemed to me as if the author needed lots of different plot points to happen very quickly and it ended up feeling very ‘choppy’. There were lots of small scenes with no development in between. If felt very much like ‘this happened’ ‘now this’ , ‘now this’ and it kind of felt a little bit like whiplash for me. I was like well that was weird, or ‘well that happened very fast’. I really enjoyed the ending and found the ending super cute but again it happened so very fast. I wish she’d just spent a little bit more time fleshing the last part of the book out to make it feel a bit more like a natural progression rather than rushed.

Overall, What If I Never Get Over You is a really enjoyable book and I still highly recommend it. But if you’re new to Paige Toon books, I recommend starting with one of her other titles. Lucy in the Sky and Only Love Can Hurt Like This are always my go-tos as my favourite books of hers. I still definitely recommend it as it’s a really cute and heartwarming romance, but there were a few pacing issues for me.