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Once and Again
Contemporary Women Fiction
Atria Books
March 10, 2026
Hardcover, E-book, Audio
256 pages
New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Serle, the author behind “heartbreaking, redemptive, and authentic” (Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author) modern classic In Five Years, returns with an unforgettable tale of a family of women with an astonishing gift: the ability to redo one moment in their lives.
The women of the Novak family were each born with a gift: they can, just once, turn back time.
Lauren has known since she was fifteen that her mother Marcella saved Lauren’s father from a deadly car accident. Dave is alive and happy, and out on the Malibu waves. But ever since, Marcella, her power spent, has lived in fear of what she won’t be able to reverse. Her own mother, Sylvia, is her polar opposite: a free-spirited iconoclast with a glamorous past she only hints at. Lauren has spent her life between these two role models—and waiting for her own catastrophe to strike.
Then one summer, Lauren’s husband takes a job in New York and she moves back to Broad Beach Road, back into her childhood home on the shores of Malibu. Lauren looks forward to surfing with her dad again and perhaps repairing an unspoken fracture in her relationship with her mother. What she doesn’t expect is for the boy next to door to return home as well: Stone, Lauren’s first love, who broke her heart nearly a decade before.
As Lauren falls into familiar patterns, with her family and, more dangerously, Stone, she finds herself thinking about all the choices, large and small, that have brought her to this moment. And wondering, finally, if one of them should be undone.
Grab a cup of tea and find a cozy spot to hunker down for the afternoon because you won’t want to put this one down
Being able to redo a choice sounds like a fun gift, but how do you choose which one moment is worth redoing? Is it a gift you will cherish because of the opportunity it presents, or a burden you carry, never quite sure when the right time is to “break the glass in case of emergency”? And how far back do you go—and what are you risking? These are all the questions you will consider as you read Rebecca Serle’s Once and Again.
I don’t want to spoil too much, but I will tell you this about the Novak women:
-Sylvia, the grandmother, has chosen to live her life chasing adventure—maybe at the expense of her relationship with her daughter.
-Marcella, the mother, lives with extreme caution, guarded and with a fiercely protective energy.
-Lauren, the daughter and granddaughter, is grappling with her present struggles.
All three women carry deep layers of trauma—life trauma, the kind we can all identify with.
Once and Again explores their relationships with one another and with others, and how their one silver ticket to a redo has affected them.
I love any book Rebecca Serle writes because her stories are relatable and thought-provoking. Sometimes, I feel like she is writing directly to a part of me I need to explore. Each book offers a fresh perspective on examining a life full of decisions, expectations, regrets, and a search for fulfillment. The magical twists in a contemporary world make it feel like magic is present all around us, and her stories always—ALWAYS—leave me feeling love, like the warmest, longest hug. I look forward to her next one.
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