The First After is a perceptive and tender debut novel following a young woman living abroad in Portugal who finds herself caught between her old life and her hard-won new life when her ex-boyfriend and first love visits her in Lisbon for a dreamy and dizzying week.

“I feel like there are so many moving parts in me, all growing at their own pace, wanting different things at different times. But all equally me.”

Anaa, a twenty-three-year-old aspiring poet, has fallen in love with her new life in Portugal. Walking cobblestone streets and talking about art with her new friends—this is what she’s always dreamed of, and she feels she’s on her way to becoming the person she wants to be. And it doesn’t hurt that there’s someone making Lisbon even more alluring: a magnetic poet and local celebrity, Tiago, with whom she’s having the kinds of spirited, all-consuming conversations she’s only ever seen in films she adores.

Just as Tiago wants to commit to Anaa, her ex-boyfriend and first love, Ben, visits from Canada, propelling her into a state of restlessness. Though she and Ben had planned his visit together, with Anaa moralizing about how outdated and reductive it would be to give up on their friendship just because they’re exes, she can’t quite reconcile Ben in Lisbon among her new friends. She’d purposely left behind a world that felt small, a future that was a fraction of what she wanted for herself, the future that included Ben. However, even while embarrassed by his simple tastes and dad jokes, she still recognizes he’s someone who can make her feel so much joy and who brings out a side of herself she tends to hide. And there might be something else there between them, something still burning. But then what about Tiago and the part of her that comes alive with him? And more importantly, what about her new world?

Absorbing, insightful, cheeky, and charming, The First After explores identity, ambition, and the highs and lows and reverberation of first love.