"It is hard, she thinks, to not only be different but different in a way that is different from someone else's different."

Bev works at Cows, a cereal bar in the mall dedicated to serving people different types of cereals and milks according to their preferences. While not glamorous, Bev really feels like she fits in with this small staff helping people connect to their childhood. While working a shift, she serves a man a bowl of cereal and has this whole mental fantasy about the two of them together. When he leaves, she takes a sip of the cereal milk he left behind and gets swept away to a different world where the two of them are dating. She's not there long, long enough to realize she doesn't have much in common with this other man, and when she "returns" to the real world she's understandably puzzled. From here she experiments with cereal and milk from people around her, seeing how her world could be different if she had been any of these other Bevs. She's also using these trips as inspiration for a book she absolutely has to finish by her birthday in less than a month, a book she absolutely is writing (not really), that she feels has a story to tell other people about her own mistakes, that absolutely needs to reach her Charlie she wronged.

Who knew I'd get so much out of a story about someone drinking someone else's cereal milk (ew). I'm not saying I'm going to run around drinking people's discarded dairy products, but a lot of Bev's feelings I get. Closure, acceptance, approval, getting frustrated at not being understood, I get it. Even when Bev was relating her experience applying for college with her parents, I found myself nodding along at how lost she felt during the process. Lots of people telling her to do things but not why, infodumping things on her and expecting her to remember these things later without context, it was a lot for me, and a lot for Bev as well.

This book is mostly about Bev's experience with finding closure for a regretful event from when she was in college. At first we're drip fed hints about this event through her conversations with people, but as Bev starts opening up to people around her about her writing, her job, her thoughts, we start to get more of the picture. We're also along for the ride as Bev starts fixing other small aspects of her social life, like the wide gulf between her and her roommate, and her sometimes confusing coworker Sylvia.

I will say that the milk trips themselves felt like they sometimes needed something more, since they're so integral to the story and the premise. Some felt genuinely like filler material, and others maybe needed something more to be plot relevant. Not really a deal breaker for me, but something to be aware of.

Just kind of a great all-around heartwarming story about a girl drinking other people's milk.

(seriously, don't do that)