The debut novel from Diana Elliot Graham, When We Were, is a beautiful, clever, and complex dual timeline love story about a woman who discovers fourteen years later that the break up that nearly broke her, was nothing more than a miscommunication.

In 2007, Arden Bancroft was away from home and ready to experience everything college has to offer. With a core group of new friends, a packed course load, and the confidence to match, she immediately throws herself into the college scene. While she might be intelligent and self-assured, she still has a lot to learn when it comes to relationships and it becomes clear as soon as she meets him.

Now, more than a decade later, when posed with a question about breakup sex, she reaches out to her college boyfriend for his perspective but his response is one she never imagined.

Despite all the years apart they are forced to confront the realization that the breakup they both remembered was nothing more than a painful miscommunication.

Arden finds herself retelling the story of the years and relationships that shaped her. Starting at the very beginning, revisiting her freshman year of college, her first meaningful love, and all that followed. Reconciling what she spent years believing to be true with the reality that memories aren’t always honest.