If I see you again tomorrow, by Robbie Couch

[Ulysses]

If I see You Again Tomorrow
BY Robbie Couch
Simon and Schuster, 2023
Five stars

Behold the magical world of crossover LGBTQ/YA novels! Most of them never make it into mainstream publication, and I find it gratifying that those that do are often special and deserve it.

Robbie Couch’s books have all, to me, been wonderful reads. This one is peculiar, which is not necessarily a good thing; but in this instance the calculated weirdness gives the author a reason to focus on the characters caught up in it. The weirdness, in this case, is an overt homage to the 1993 film Groundhog Day. That film is even referenced once, assuring us that the author knew what he was doing by tapping into a cultural icon of my generation for his own purposes.

Clark Huckleton is a lonely seventeen-year-old. His parents are in the middle of a divorce, and he and his irritating little sister have had to move into a cramped apartment with their mother. Shy and introverted, Clark has also recently lost his best friend, Sadie, who moved away with her family, spoiling their shared plan for a fabulous senior year together.

Clark is also stuck in a time loop, and thus relives the same day over and over again. That is, until two wild deviations occur: on one reiteration of his loop, his therapist gives him four tasks to complete, in order to deal with his loneliness. Then, inexplicably, a dazzling tall boy named Beau Dupont appears in Clark’s trigonometry class, and turns his time loop upside down.

What ensues is an emotionally charged quest to figure out why Beau suddenly appeared, and how that relates to Clark’s being stuck on September 20. What also occurs, of course, is a deep exploration of Clark’s heart and mind, and what begins to feel like a microscopic revisiting of what happened the day before the loop started. The broader metaphysical implications of the time loop are unsettling enough; but as Clark digs deeper, becoming a day-by-repeat-day sleuth to solve the mystery of his life, the emotional power of his predicament really unfolds.

I can’t quite explain it, but there were a lot of tears in this for me – and I’m old enough to be Clark’s grandfather. Couch puts painful pressure on issues of fate, personal choice, and the ramifications of even the smallest action in our lives. While Clark is at the center of the story, it is not all about him – but about everyone around him.

If they ever make a movie of this, they’ll undoubtedly ruin it, because for all its one-note plot premise, it is a surprisingly profound study of the human heart. Much of the story’s richness is in the language and ideas, and those are hard to get onto the screen.