Until We Met: A Novel (The Birch Girls)

Summer 2005 was supposed to be predictable. Seventeen-year-old Beth Hartwell planned to spend it perched in her backyard tree, lost in her latest book. But when her parents hand her a brochure, her carefully predictable world is uprooted.

Instead of quiet afternoons at home, Beth finds herself at Camp Falls Creek. Determined to survive the summer without drawing attention, Beth keeps to herself and counts down the days until she can leave. But when a full-ride scholarship to Blackwater State—her dream college—is announced as the prize for the Camp’s Olympics, blending in isn’t an option, and sheneeds Tucker’s help.

Charming, confident, and impossible to ignore, Tucker offers Beth a deal: he’ll help her navigate camp and step outside the walls she’s built around herself if she helps him win the attention of her cabinmate, Melanie.

What begins as a simple arrangement quickly spirals into something neither of them planned. One that blurs the lines between helping and falling for each other. The scholarship is within reach—and the stakes have never been higher.

In an instant, everything Beth has worked for collapses, and the consequences of a single choice ripple through the years.

Ten years later, Beth is no longer the girl she was. Now a nurse, she keeps her grief buried beneath long shifts and a carefully controlled life. But the past has a way of resurfacing, and when it does, Beth is forced to confront the summer that shaped her—and the memories of the boy she never truly left behind.

For readers who enjoy character-driven New Adult fiction, Until We Met is a contemporary romance that combines first love, heartbreak, and the enduring effects of friendship and second chances. Fans of Jenny Han, Jill Santopolo, and Katherine Center will find a familiar emotional depth in a story that begins with a summer—and changes lives forever.

Until We Met is the first installment in The Birch Girls series.