Ex Marks the Spot

July 19, 2021
Norris explores grief, regret, and obsession—with a time-travel twist—in his romantic debut (after short story collection The Fierce and Unforgiving Muse). Gardener Oliver Canfield has spent a decade mourning his first love, Steve Ranley, whose death has cast a shadow over Oliver’s relationship with his husband, Bradley. When Oliver crashes his car into the same oak tree that claimed Steve’s life at age 18, he travels back in time to the days before Steve’s death, giving him the chance to prevent Steve from dying and change the course of his own life. But there’s a price to be paid for changing history, and Oliver must decide whether he wants to sacrifice his present to indulge the past. Norris does a good job exploring the fraught, hormonal confusion of queer adolescence, but the story lacks the stakes and urgency necessary to let the emotional beats land, and it never fully takes advantage of its own inventive premise. This will appeal to fans of time-travel stories centered on the ethical implications of altering timelines, even if it doesn’t quite manage to explore those questions in full.