REVIEW: Once and Again by Rebecca Serle

Once and Again by Rebecca Serle: Lauren Novak grew up knowing the women in her family share an extraordinary gift: once in their lifetime, they can turn back time and undo a single moment. Her mother already used that power years ago to save Lauren’s father from a deadly accident — and ever since, Lauren has lived quietly wondering when her own moment will come.

When her husband’s job sends them to New York for the summer, Lauren returns home to Malibu and the beach house where she grew up. Being back means long days on the ocean with her dad, the complicated closeness of her mother and grandmother, and memories she thought she had already made peace with. But the biggest surprise comes when Stone — the boy next door and the first person she ever loved — suddenly reappears in her life.

As old feelings resurface and the past starts to blur with the present, Lauren finds herself questioning the path that led her here… and whether the one chance her family carries is meant to change everything.

ONCE AND AGAIN by Rebecca Serle is one of those stories that quietly pulls you into its emotional orbit. Lauren has spent her entire life knowing that the women in her family are each given one chance to turn back time — Growing up with the weight of that possibility hanging over her life adds a subtle tension to every choice she makes.

What I loved most about this story is the way it explores the quiet “what ifs” we all carry. The magical element is subtle, but it adds a thoughtful layer to the bigger question at the heart of the book: whether changing one moment could really change everything.

Tropes & Themes

• Returning home
• Magical realism
• Coastal setting
• What-if romance
• Time and second chances
• Family legacy
• First love and unresolved feelings
• The weight of life choices

ONCE AND AGAIN explores the choices that shape our lives and the moments we wish we could hold onto a little longer. Perfect for readers who love thoughtful, emotional stories about love, family, and the moments that shape who we become.

Book Info:

Publication: March 10, 2026 | Atria Books |

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.
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