The Backtrack By Erin La Rosa Is The Ultimate Throwback Novel

We could never get tired of this year’s adult romances! If you haven’t heard of Erin La Rosa, she’s become a staple in THP’s reading lists since For Butter or Worse in 2022. And she’s just released her latest romance with The Backtrack!

The Backtrack by Erin La Rosa follows Sam Leto, who left behind her hometown of Tybee Island, Georgia, to become a pilot. She returns to Tybee Island when her grandmother Pearl decides to sell the family home. As she packs up her old bedroom, she finds a CD player with the power to show her an alternate universe where she and her childhood best friend Damon got together.

A timeslip romcom with childhood friends-to-lovers? We’re so there! Here are three of our favorite things about Erin La Rosa’s The Backtrack!

Book Overview: The Backtrack

Content Warnings: parental abandonment

Summary: Nearly twenty years ago, Sam Leto left her small hometown of Tybee Island, Georgia, to pursue her dreams of becoming a pilot. While she’d prefer to keep flying away from her painful childhood memories, her beloved grandmother Pearl decides it’s time to sell the family home. Reluctantly, Sam is summoned back to pack up the house.

The 2000s nostalgia from Sam’s old bedroom hits immediately: Fall Out Boy posters, drawers of roll-on body glitter and even her favorite CD player with a mixtape from her best friend, Damon Rocha. Damon was always a safe place and Sam often wonders what if her teenage self admitted her feelings for him back then…

Mysteriously, the CD player still works all these years later. And somehow it has the power to show Sam an alternate version of her life.

Song by song, Sam receives flashbacks from her past—senior prom, graduation, leaving home. But the memories aren’t as she remembers them; they show what could have been. Suddenly, Sam knows exactly what would have happened if she’d taken a chance with Damon—and she can’t help feeling she made a terrible mistake leaving Tybee all those years ago.

The Nostalgia

What would you do if you got to see another version of your high school self? Honestly, we’d be down to be in Sam’s shoes. Some days, we find ourselves feeling nostalgic of the person we used to be in our adolescence. We reminisce about the music we listened to and the celebrities we obsessed over. And no matter how cringy we may have acted back then, we wouldn’t want to change a thing. Getting over who you were in high school and the expectations you had for the future is definitely a canon event.

Music And Movie References

The Backtrack also comes with a built-in playlist, using the mixtape Damon had made for Sam on that fateful day in high school. It reminded us of our own emo and punk music taste from the early 2000s and 2010s. We got throwback tracks from Evanescence, Fall Out Boy, The Fray, and Avril Lavigne, who were all staples of our playlists throughout middle and high school. And who could forget the universal Twilight phase we went through? Those movies still hold a special place in our hearts, BTW.

The Happy Ending

Another one of our favorite things about The Backtrack is how Sam and Damon’s love story ends. Even after Sam sees how another life would’ve played out, she doesn’t regret the things she did. She’s glad she went to flight school and became a pilot rather than staying in Tybee Island to be with Damon. Because they get to be together in adulthood, and it works out so much better. They choose a lifestyle that works for them, and it’s because they know what they need from each other now.

The Backtrack by Erin La Rosa releases July 16th, and you can preorder a copy of it here!

What do you think of Erin La Rosa’s The Backtrack? Have you read any of her other romances? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!

Want to hear some of our audiobook recommendations? Here’s the latest!

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