Before We Were Strangers

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of cursing and addiction.

Before We Were Strangers uses the lost love and second-chance romance tropes to explore the possibilities of first love lasting over time. The novel revolves around the protagonists Matt and Grace, who meet and fall in love when they’re in college but lose contact due to extenuating circumstances after they graduate. Both characters experience emotional and circumstantial fallouts from their separation. Neither Matt nor Grace is sure why the other has disappeared from their lives, but they remain in each other’s hearts for more than a decade. Their lasting attachment to each other over the years suggests that first loves are powerful connections that transcend time and space, disappointment and heartbreak.

Matt and Grace’s reunion in the narrative present offers them the opportunity to reconnect and rediscover their old bond—a chance that teaches them the enduring power of their original connection. Although Matt and Grace met when they were young, inexperienced college students, when they reunite they discover that their favorite things about one another still remain. Together they rediscover parts of themselves as individuals that they only understood when they were a couple. 

While Matt and Grace are both 36-year-old adults with complicated lives and defined careers, they both realize that being together is more important than anything else they’ve ever experienced.