The In-Between Bookstore Summary, Characters and Themes

The In-Between Bookstore by Edward Underhill is a contemporary queer coming-of-age story that centers on identity, memory, and the fragile bonds of friendship.  It follows Darby, a trans man nearing thirty, who returns to his small hometown after losing his job and losing his sense of direction in New York City.

What starts as a reluctant retreat home becomes an extraordinary and emotionally charged encounter with the past—literally.  At the local independent bookstore where he once worked, Darby comes face to face with a version of his younger self. This meeting sets off a journey through time, emotion, and self-understanding as Darby confronts the unresolved pain of his youth, especially his broken friendship with Michael, and tries to reclaim the lost pieces of himself.

Summary

Darby, a nearly thirty-year-old trans man living in New York City, finds himself untethered after being laid off from his job at a failing tech startup.  Facing an unaffordable rent increase and a mounting sense of purposelessness, he reluctantly attends a friend’s birthday party, only to be overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy and alienation.

Though his friends offer support, Darby cannot shake the sensation that he doesn’t belong—not in the city, not in his circle of friends, not in the life he’s built.  This emotional dislocation triggers a spontaneous decision: he will return to Oak Falls, Illinois, ostensibly to help his mother move, but really to flee a life that no longer feels like his.

Once back in Oak Falls, Darby is bombarded by memories—especially those tied to In Between Books, the independent bookstore where he once worked.  The past suddenly becomes present when Darby stumbles upon a teenage version of himself working behind the register.

What begins as confusion soon turns into a surreal realization: the bookstore exists in a kind of temporal loop, anchored in 2009.  Darby’s attempts to comprehend this phenomenon are filled with disbelief, dread, and a slow-growing need for resolution.

Each return to the bookstore deepens the mystery and his emotional investment, particularly as he observes Young Darby’s relationship with Michael, the best friend who cut ties with him so many years ago.

Outside the bookstore’s time loop, Darby tries to reconnect with his present-day life in Oak Falls.  His mother is eccentric and well-meaning but emotionally distant.

She keeps him busy with packing and distractions, and she’s curiously accepting of his presence without probing into the deeper emotional reasons for his return.  Meanwhile, Darby’s chance encounter with Michael—the adult version—stirs a turbulent mix of resentment, longing, and curiosity.

They cautiously begin to interact again, leading to a reunion that is more complex than comforting.

In his visits to the bookstore, Darby watches his younger self live through moments just before his friendship with Michael ended.  Posing as a stranger, Darby tries to guide Young Darby without revealing his identity, subtly pushing him toward self-understanding and emotional honesty.

These efforts are bittersweet, both hopeful and futile, as the rules governing the time loop remain unclear.  At the same time, Darby and Michael in the present start to build a fragile connection.

Their tentative conversations, laden with shared history and unspoken truths, culminate in a party at Michael’s house.  There, Darby is astonished to discover that many people he once assumed were straight or conforming actually identify as queer.

The Oak Falls he fled turns out to be more accepting than he ever realized.

But just as Darby begins to feel close to Michael again, a confrontation on the porch ruptures their progress.  Michael cannot go back and relive their teenage pain.

The emotional wound from their past—especially the moment when Darby told Michael “someone like you could never understand”—resurfaces with clarity.  Michael had been trying to come out to Darby at the time, and Darby’s words shut that door.

As adults, they finally name their hurts and acknowledge their shared failure to communicate.  This reckoning becomes the emotional fulcrum of the story.

Darby’s urgency to repair the past intensifies.  He races to the bookstore again and again, trying to impart wisdom to his younger self.

He leaves Transgender History for Young Darby, hoping it might accelerate his path toward self-understanding.  But the time portal begins to falter—he can no longer count on it to open when he needs it most.

During a chaotic and emotionally raw birthday party thrown by his mother, Darby reaches a breaking point.  Michael’s silence and the unpredictability of the time loop push him to a final, desperate attempt to return to the bookstore.

The climax arrives when Darby is able to meet Young Darby one last time.  This encounter is emotional, tender, and fraught with risk.

Darby tells his younger self that starting over is not the only way to become who you are—that truth, trust, and connection are not just possible but essential.  He encourages his past self to tell Michael the truth and not shut people out.

As he steps out of the bookstore, Darby knows he may have changed the past—and possibly erased himself from existence.

But when he wakes up the next morning, he’s still in Oak Falls, still himself.  Whether the past changed or not remains ambiguous, but Darby feels different.

He reaches out to Olivia, mending their strained friendship.  He decides to return to New York—not to escape Oak Falls, but because he finally understands where he belongs.

Darby visits Michael one last time.  They walk together to the Falls, acknowledge the love they once shared, and accept that their lives are now on different paths.

There’s no dramatic reunion, no romantic reconciliation, just mutual respect and understanding.

In the closing scenes, Darby helps his mother finish packing.  He cuts down the old tire swing in their backyard, a quiet but meaningful act of closure.

As he drives away from his childhood home, he texts his friends back in New York.  This time, he’s not fleeing his past—he’s heading toward his future, whole and self-assured.

And when Olivia picks up the phone, Darby doesn’t hesitate.  He simply says, “I’m coming home.”

Characters

Darby

Darby is the emotional and narrative core of The In-Between Bookstore, a trans man approaching thirty who finds himself at a point of existential rupture.  Having spent over a decade in New York City, he is burdened by the weight of unfulfilled ambitions and the alienation that stems from never quite feeling like he belonged.

Recently laid off from a grant-writing job and facing a rent hike he can’t afford, Darby’s initial sense of collapse is framed around financial insecurity, but quickly broadens into a deeper spiritual and emotional reckoning.  His discomfort at Olivia’s birthday party, where his friends seem effortlessly successful and confident, underscores his acute self-consciousness and dissatisfaction.

His move back to Oak Falls is not just geographic; it is a return to a younger, unprocessed self, one still haunted by fractured relationships and unresolved trauma.

Throughout the novel, Darby becomes a time traveler in both literal and metaphorical senses.  The appearance of his teenage self in the magically preserved bookstore propels him into confronting a past he had attempted to outrun.

The novel masterfully juxtaposes his present with his past, revealing how much of his identity remains bound up in memories, miscommunications, and internalized shame.  Darby’s shifting dynamic with Michael—from awkward reconnection to romantic entanglement—exposes his deep longing for both validation and closure.

His arc is defined by a search for self-acceptance: to reconcile who he was with who he is.  In the end, Darby chooses to return to New York not as a form of escape but as an empowered return to his chosen family and his evolving sense of self, having finally understood that healing doesn’t require a perfect past but the courage to live truthfully in the present.

Michael Weaver

Michael serves as both Darby’s mirror and foil in The In-Between Bookstore.  Once Darby’s best friend in high school, Michael is now a ninth-grade teacher in Oak Falls who has navigated his own journey of queerness largely within the constraints of their small town.

He is reserved, cautious, and emotionally guarded, a man who has carved out a quiet queer life in the very town Darby fled.  The tension in Michael’s character lies in his ability to perform a seemingly stable masculinity in a place steeped in normative expectations, while quietly maintaining his identity.

His early interactions with Darby are tinged with discomfort and buried hurt, and it is clear that the unresolved trauma of their teenage fallout—fueled by miscommunication and unspoken desires—still lingers powerfully between them.

As their interactions progress, Michael reveals layers of vulnerability.  His kiss with Darby at the football game and his eventual reciprocation of Darby’s feelings suggest a deep well of affection that was never properly acknowledged.

Yet Michael is also emblematic of the limits of reconciliation.  He cannot fully revisit the past without pain, and his life in Oak Falls, with its own rhythms and responsibilities, is not a space he can easily abandon.

The complexity of his relationship with Darby is ultimately rooted in mutual misrecognition—two people who hurt each other while trying to understand themselves.  Their final parting, marked by tenderness and realism, affirms Michael’s role not as a lost opportunity but as a meaningful connection that helped catalyze Darby’s growth.

Phyllis (Darby’s Mother)

Phyllis is a charming, eccentric, and emotionally opaque presence in The In-Between Bookstore, providing both comic relief and emotional grounding.  Her quirks—like climbing ladders in a bathrobe and spying on neighbors—are endearing, but also indicative of her unorthodox ways of navigating grief and change.

Phyllis’s decision to sell the family home and move into a condo coincides with Darby’s return, and her insistence on treating this transition as normal belies a deeper emotional undercurrent.  She loves her son and wants him close, but often struggles to articulate her support in ways that Darby can readily absorb.

Their relationship is marked by a kind of affectionate detachment; she means well but doesn’t always know how to bridge the emotional or generational gaps that separate them.

Despite these limitations, Phyllis plays an instrumental role in Darby’s healing.  She encourages him to re-engage with his roots, subtly nudging him toward closure without overt meddling.

Her own transformation—from the keeper of a family home to someone embracing a new chapter—parallels Darby’s journey, suggesting that personal reinvention is possible at any age.  The birthday party she organizes, though mismatched to Darby’s mood, represents her way of showing love.

Ultimately, Phyllis’s presence affirms that familial relationships, even when imperfect, can offer a kind of grounding and grace that is deeply necessary.

Olivia

Olivia is Darby’s sharp-tongued, well-meaning, and emotionally perceptive friend from New York, serving as both a lifeline and a source of tension.  A successful stand-up comic turning thirty, Olivia represents the version of adult life that Darby feels excluded from—glamorous, driven, and outwardly confident.

Their friendship is marked by genuine affection but also fraught with misunderstandings.  Olivia’s confrontation with Darby about his decision to return to Oak Falls frames his choice as escapism, and while she doesn’t understand the full extent of his emotional turmoil, her concern is genuine.

She is not afraid to challenge Darby, which makes her both a frustrating and essential figure in his life.

Though she remains mostly off-stage during Darby’s time in Oak Falls, Olivia’s presence looms large, particularly in Darby’s moments of doubt and reflection.  Her eventual reconciliation with Darby, through a phone call where he reaffirms his intention to return to New York, signals a renewed commitment to their friendship.

Olivia stands as a symbol of Darby’s chosen family—imperfect but unwavering—and their bond is a reminder that home is not just a place but the people who see you clearly and want you to thrive.

Young Darby

The teenage version of Darby—referred to throughout the story as Young Darby—serves as a haunting and poignant embodiment of the past in The In-Between Bookstore.  Working at the magically preserved In Between Books, Young Darby is caught in a moment of life before everything began to unravel: before transitioning, before losing Michael, and before fleeing Oak Falls.

To the adult Darby, he is both a memory and a mystery, someone who hasn’t yet learned how to protect himself but also someone brimming with unrealized potential.  The interactions between the two versions of Darby are emotionally complex; the adult wants to offer wisdom, healing, and protection, but struggles with the knowledge that pain may be inevitable.

Young Darby’s fear, confusion, and occasional flashes of insight reflect the rawness of adolescence and the burden of not yet having language for one’s truth.  The advice offered by adult Darby—about trusting friends and not needing to start over to be oneself—becomes a gift not just to the past but to the present.

Whether or not Young Darby alters his course is left ambiguous, but the mere act of facing him becomes cathartic.  This character functions as more than a plot device; he is the emotional fulcrum around which Darby’s healing pivots, reminding readers that true reconciliation often requires confronting the parts of ourselves we once left behind.

Themes

Identity and the Multiplicity of the Self

In The In-Between Bookstore, identity is explored not as a static state but as something layered, temporal, and subject to continual reconstruction.  Darby, a trans man nearing thirty, confronts his past not only through memory but through an actual metaphysical encounter with his teenage self.

This temporal mirroring allows the narrative to consider identity as both historical and future-facing.  Darby’s sense of self, rooted in his present-day body and mind, is complicated by his proximity to the younger version of himself who does not yet understand the truths Darby has come to claim.

The uncanny interaction between these two selves allows for a rich interrogation of what it means to transition—not only in terms of gender but also in terms of emotional maturity, self-recognition, and autonomy.  The physical time travel into the bookstore serves as a metaphor for the lingering presence of one’s past and the gaps between who we were and who we are trying to become.

The novel questions whether our current selves can ever fully reconcile with our past, and whether healing can be achieved through self-forgiveness and understanding, or if we are always performing identity in relation to others.  Importantly, Darby does not simply wish to “fix” his past self but seeks acknowledgment of the pain and confusion that came before.

This honest and often painful confrontation makes identity a lived, breathing experience—one that is haunted, mutable, and essential.

Belonging and Displacement

Throughout The In-Between Bookstore, Darby experiences profound displacement, both spatially and emotionally.  Manhattan, despite being his home for over a decade, never fully accepts or comforts him.

Even his friend group—creative, queer, and supportive—feels like a world he has failed to master.  His move back to Oak Falls is not a triumphant return but a retreat tinged with shame and exhaustion.

However, Oak Falls, too, is a site of estrangement, filled with ghosts of conformity, adolescence, and the people who saw Darby before he understood himself.  Belonging, then, is never simple.

It is something Darby seeks but rarely feels.  The complexity deepens as he begins to see Oak Falls not just as a conservative dead-end, but as a place of quiet queerness and subtle community.

The party at Michael’s house full of queer adults who remained in town forces Darby to reconsider his assumptions about what belonging means—and whether it is tied to geography, community, or internal peace.  His ultimate decision to return to New York is not because Oak Falls is uninhabitable, but because his chosen family and sense of future reside there.

The novel suggests that belonging is less about being accepted by a place or group and more about finding the people—and sometimes the parts of oneself—with whom one can feel seen and valued.

Miscommunication and the Fragility of Connection

Miscommunication plays a central role in the emotional arc of The In-Between Bookstore, particularly in the fraught history between Darby and Michael.  Their adolescent bond, filled with unspoken queerness and burgeoning desire, collapsed under the weight of unsaid truths.

As adults, they both carry the scars of that rupture—Darby with guilt and longing, Michael with confusion and betrayal.  The key misunderstanding, stemming from Darby’s offhand comment that Michael would never understand, reveals how differently words can land depending on the listener’s inner world.

Michael, trying to come out as gay, was wounded by a line Darby spoke in his own moment of closeted pain.  That moment, frozen in memory, becomes a fulcrum on which years of silence and hurt pivot.

The novel explores how easily connection can fracture when fear silences honesty, and how difficult it is to rebuild trust after the fact.  Even when Darby and Michael kiss as adults, the intimacy is haunted by their inability to clearly define what they mean to each other.

Their final conversation—tender but realistic—shows that some connections cannot be restored fully but can be honored for what they once were.  Through these emotionally complex dynamics, the story underscores how love and friendship can suffer not from malice but from silence, fear, and timing.

Temporal Dislocation and the Persistence of the Past

The time travel element in The In-Between Bookstore is not simply a science-fiction conceit but a deeply symbolic gesture that frames the entire narrative.  Darby’s return to his teenage self within the confines of the old bookstore literalizes the way the past continues to live in the present.

The past is not left behind but experienced again, often with more clarity or regret, and always with emotional stakes.  Darby’s interactions with his younger self raise questions about fate, choice, and emotional revisionism.

Can one ever truly alter the trajectory of one’s life, or is the act of revisiting it enough to bring about change?  The breakdown of the time portal—its instability and eventual closure—reflects the impossibility of permanently escaping the present.

However, it also gestures toward the emotional need to confront unresolved pain and to reckon with the person one used to be.  Even when Darby cannot be certain whether his actions in the past will ripple forward, the act of speaking to his former self becomes a kind of healing.

The motif of time looping and collapsing into itself suggests that progress is never linear.  The past clings to us, informs us, and, if confronted with care, can become a site of transformation rather than paralysis.

Chosen Family and Emotional Homecoming

The resolution of The In-Between Bookstore hinges on Darby’s decision to return to New York and reunite with Olivia and his community, making the theme of chosen family central to the narrative.  While Darby’s biological mother offers moments of warmth and comic relief, their relationship remains emotionally limited—more functional than transformative.

In contrast, Olivia, despite the initial rift, represents someone who has seen Darby through each metamorphosis and accepted him without question.  The home Darby ultimately seeks is not rooted in place but in people—specifically those who affirm his evolving identity.

His phone call to Olivia, culminating in the line “I’m coming home,” signals not just physical relocation but emotional reclamation.  This return is not a retreat but a conscious step toward where he can thrive.

The novel makes clear that queer people often have to build their own networks of love and support, especially when biological ties cannot hold the complexity of who they become.  Darby’s arc shows that healing isn’t always found in reconciliation with one’s origin story; sometimes, it’s in choosing new ground and new people who understand you in your full truth.

Home, in this sense, is a feeling of being known and loved, not just remembered.