Pace
Moderate
Can We Be Strangers Again?
Romance
- Print length
- 232 pagesPenguin Random House, 2025
Description
Dev and two college friends build their closeness through late-night conversations, shared laughter, and promises that seem strong enough to outlast graduation. Their balance changes when two members of the trio fall in love, turning friendship into a tangle of competing loyalties. A betrayal then fractures the group and leaves Dev carrying feelings that do not fit neatly into either romance or resentment. Faced with the possibility of renewed connection, he must decide whether reaching back toward the people he lost offers a second chance or merely exposes him to the same hurt. The novel centers less on choosing between simple alternatives than on the unstable boundary between friendship and love, and on whether intimacy can survive after trust has changed its meaning.
Reading profile
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Tone
Hopeful · Melancholic · Reflective · Romantic
Focus
Character · Relationships
Emotional intensity
4 / 5
Reading complexity
1–5 · higher means more demanding- Writing
- 2 / 5
- Ideas
- 2 / 5
- Structure
- 2 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 1 / 5
Themes
Book details
For the print edition listed above.
- Publisher
- Penguin Random House
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780143475927
Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.
Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.