A Star is Born meets Christina Lauren’s Love and Other Words in this deeply romantic, emotionally sweeping novel about first love, fame, and the long road to finding yourself—even if it takes a lifetime.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from First Love Last Love by Adele Griffin, which releases on November 3rd 2026.
When the past collides with the present—literally—one woman must decide if the life she built is the one she truly wants, or just the one she chose.
Vida Jamison favors the reliable and the unsurprising – the things she can count on. But all it takes is a winter storm, a chance encounter, and a familiar voice to turn certainty into quicksand.
Elijah Beck, her first love and most enduring wildcard, is back in town.
He might have struck gold on the stage, writing the soundtrack to the lives of a generation, but for Vida, he’s just the one person who has always known how to get under her skin. Elijah, for all his talent and magnetism, has spent a lifetime being wanted but never quite held—by the industry that made him famous, by the fans who adored him from a safe distance. When an accident lands them in the hospital, Vida has to face the question she’s spent two decades avoiding: Is Elijah her greatest mistake, or the love she was always meant to find again?
Nostalgia is a tricky thing. The past can pull you under just as easily as it can set you free.
EXCERPT
CHAPTER 1
VIDA
The weather flips like a coin.
Down the frozen foods aisle, someone whistles.
I turn my head from the freezer’s glow of toaster pizzas and Klondike bars. It’s a kid in a puffy silver jacket, hood up, looking out the window, where the sky’s gone dark as granite. The forecast won’t commit – a chance of flurries, maybe more – but the clouds are saying something else. Either way, Luke is back from his ski trip tomorrow, and he’ll be, as ever, starving.
Hence the errand: a dash through the Wawa food market instead of settling in with my girl-dinner of cheese, crackers, and a glass (okay, maybe two) of Chablis. I know better than to be snow-bound with a growing fourteen-year-old and nothing more to offer him than a couple of limp carrots and half a box of stale, welded raisins.
Before he left, Luke let me fold him into a big hug, the way I used to. A mom squeeze like an old song that says everything’s okay. It’s been years since he let me hug him like that, and it felt big and right.
He lingered, just a second, then backed off. “It’ll be a great weekend, I promise.” “Maybe.” Luke’s new answer for everything.
However much I stock up, no doubt tomorrow I’ll be splurging on Grubhub as a way of making up for Luke’s year of upheaval: the split weekends and the separated-parent shuffle between the main house and the two-bedroom rental in Manayunk.
Behind me, I feel a light tug at my coat sleeve. “Vida Marie?”
My heart stops. Nobody ever adds the Marie. Nobody but him. There was a time when I’d hoped to bump into him everywhere. A time when I’d prayed that I’d never see him again. I force a long inhale before turning.
“Elijah.” Speaking his name clicks some small lock inside me. Because yes, it’s Elijah, his jacket hood pulled low to avoid recognition. I’d pegged him for a teenager from behind-he’s that thin. “Of all the Wawas in Pennsylvania,” he says, a wry half smile on his face, “I had to walk into this one.”
“What are the odds,” I manage, and the meaning of it hangs there, unspoken. We always used to come here after school for Italian hoagies drenched in vinegar and sweet cherry peppers. I can still taste them, the same way I can still feel Elijah behind me in line, his arms snug around my waist, his chin on my head.
Now we just stare at each other, stunned. Caught in a moment neither of us was prepared for. My heart’s thudding. I want to step forward into the hug I know Elijah yearns to give, but the idea of touch also feels like it might knock me over.
Who are we to each other now?
His face is familiar, and also not. Those gray eyes, so wide set, the cheekbones even sharper now. It’s a face that can shift from beautiful to haunting, depending on the light. Tonight I’m struck by how Elijah feels as much like a homecoming as an intrusion. Forty-four last week, and he looks it. Handsome but…forty-four. I see the silver threading his hairline, the etch of worry between his brows, a herringbone scar puckered at his left temple. His fingers, hands, and wrists are a map of tattoos. Many more than I remember: some finely inked, others smudged as faded bruises.
He’s doing that thing, his old anxious habit, where he rubs his thumbs over his nail beds.
“Next,” calls the checkout girl. He leans close. “Wait for me?”
I nod and move forward. Once my items are bagged, I step aside, watching as he takes a pint of heavy whipping cream and a carton of eggs from his plastic basket.
“You here long?”
He shakes his head. “Through the holiday. Staying with Ruben Ruiz.”
“Oh! Say hi. Ruben’s son, Andreas, and Luke play basket –
” “No way!” The checkout girl gasps. “Eli Beck? Aren’t you Eli Beck?” Elijah’s fans are relentless, especially here, where he’s Philadelphia’s favorite son, weighed on the fame scale somewhere between the Liberty Bell and the Rocky statue. Or, at least, he used to be.
Elijah offers his trademark oversized grin. “Yup.”
“Can I get a picture?”
“Sure.” And just like that, it begins. Fans materializing from the ether, insistent and curious. People craning for a better look, Eli World expanding by the second.
“Eli, I saw you twenty years ago at Staples Center!” says a guy with a professor beard.
“Cool, cool,” says Elijah. “Solid tour.”
“You were on fire.” Professor Beard holds up his phone. “One pie? For my wife?”
“Let’s do it.”
I remember this rhythm – I used to run interference, once upon our time. “Not now, sorry!” I was polite but steely. “We need to get going!” I learned how to be the heavy, the buffer, so that Elijah could stay the good guy, the charmer.
“Eli,” calls out a woman in a velour tracksuit, “sing a line from ‘Birthday Baby’ for my nephew, Jake?”
Elijah throws me a don’t leave glance as he takes the woman’s phone. ”A single charm on your gold chain, baby! Day-old cake for your big day, baby!”‘
My skin prickles to hear it, as the store erupts in cheering and clapping.
It’s been decades since “Birthday Baby” topped any chart-now it’s a staple at children’s birthday parties-including Luke’s, a few years ago. But Elijah’s remarkable voice pulls me under. I can see his bare, boyish shoulders, his head bent low over his guitar, his dog-eared songbook flopped open.
I lean in, whispering, “I’ve got a virtual telehealth visit scheduled, and snow’s starting—”
“Okay, then can I call you?” he asks. “We’re overdue.”
Overdue is putting it mildly. Usually, Elijah’s name comes up in secondhand updates from school friends like Ruben, though he’s been back in the headlines lately-first for the awful thing that happened at his house this past summer; better and more recently his very first Grammy nomination, an honor he’d coveted since the day he wrote his first song. The last time I actually saw Elijah in person was three years ago, at Miriam’s funeral.
“Sure,” I say, just as every phone in the store blares a severe weather alert.
Two Wawa employees burst from a back room.
“Eli Beck! No shit, it is you!” one of them yells, gripping Elijah’s hand.
I mouth goodbye, but Elijah’s already performing again. Signing autographs, posing for photos. Same old song and dance. Blinking back the sudden heat in my eyes, I push out the door and into the storm.
Shock, tears of shock. That’s all it is.
MIXTAPE #1
PRUDENTIAL HALL, NEW JERSEY/ SUMMER 2001
Elijah was a few yards down the cinder-block corridor, light bars buzzing overhead, ringed by his stylists, handlers, and a few radio-station VIPs. His new leather jacket coyly opened over a tight, bedazzled T-shirt. The casual poise, the lazy way his fingertips balanced a plastic cup by its rim…
When he saw her, his grin faltered. Vida’d hoped she might surprise him, but it looked like she’d done her job too well. For a half second, she thought he might pretend not to notice her, and her heart lurched. Then he recovered. Gave her a slow, dimpled smile as he knocked back the rest of the drink before she reached him.
“Baby! I thought you were coming tomorrow! How’d you find me?”
“I switched shifts at the restaurant,” she said, feeling foolish.
That same girl, the publicist girl, was hovering. Vida couldn’t remember her name, and now she backed away fast. But Vida wasn’t worried about other girls-she knew Elijah’s real love was in that plastic cup. The secret girlfriend who never left his side. And for all his attitude of availability, Elijah wasn’t much attracted to people; what he liked best was people being attracted to him.
“Making new friends?” she asked, her eyes on his shirt. She’d read on a gossip board how he did this. Wore a fan’s T-shirt from the night before.
He pretended not to catch her insinuation.
“Nobody memorable,” he said, and she knew at least this was true.
“You looked the wrong kind of surprised.”
“Now you’re being paranoid.” As he brought her in for the hug she wasn’t sure she wanted, he whispered against her ear, “Don’t let them see us fight, okay? It’s all they want.”
‘Tm not fighting.” She spoke through gritted teeth. Cameras flashed. The tour photographer-nothing like a juicy preshow snap with the hometown girlfriend. Elijah’s hand found hers and laced their fingers, an unspoken stage note that they were in it together.
All around her, the noise swelled. Prudential Hall held fewer than three thousand, but it sounded like a stadium. Elijah was only the opener but already he was the breakout star. Everyone wanted him. She tugged her sleeves over the Sharpied Xes the bouncer had slashed across her knuckles to mark her as underage.
“You’re still pissed,” Elijah murmured, steering her away from the crew. “But the shirt was a fan toss. Girls throw things, I wear them. It’s part of the act.
“You promised Miriam no drinking. You could get busted, too – you’re not even twenty-one yet.”
“Are you here to Breathalyze me?” She didn’t answer.
“I can handle one drink before I go on,” he added, peevish.
“One, really?”
A roadie cut between them. Then Marty, the stage manager.
“Five minutes,” he barked, then briefly touched two fingers to Vida’s shoulder. The pressure was light but unmistakable. “You can’t be down here, Miss Vida.”
“Give us a second,” said Elijah.
Vida wanted to stay furious. She wanted to tell him that she was losing faith. Instead she slipped out of her sweatshirt, and then her T-shirt. White with tiny wildflowers.
“At least wear mine,” she said, balling it up and tossing it to him.
He laughed. “Sure. You got it,” he said as he shrugged off his jacket, switched shirts, and kissed her hard on the mouth. How much she wanted to believe it, and how much he also needed her to believe it – that they were fine.
Marty cleared his throat. “Come on, Vida. I’ll get you a spot side stage.”
She nodded. As Marty guided her forward, she forced herself not to look back.
