past lives!

probably the movie that inspired me most while writing good friends with the exception of boyhood. while the idea for the novel had been bouncing around my brain for a bit, seeing past lives - and its depiction of childhood friends-to-lovers torn apart by time and reconnecting as adults and making sense of what they meant to each other now - helped cement the structure of the story in my mind and what its ultimate message would be. without giving away too much, the novel's resolution was greatly informed by how past lives resolved its own "one who got away" narrative (similar to la la land before it) and the belief that "you don't only get one love in this life, but you never forget your first."