In Every Possible Way Summary: A Dreamlike Romance That Feels Like Waking Up

Last Updated: June 24, 2026

Table of Contents

Introduction To In Every Possible Way Summary

In Every Possible Way by Alicia Thompson is a magical realism romance where a mugging in Florida leads to an impossible weekend in Ireland—and a connection that feels more real than waking life.

What if the most real thing that ever happened to you was something everyone insisted was a dream?

That question sits at the center of Alicia Thompson’s latest novel, a book that walks the blurry line between coma-induced hallucination and something far stranger.

After a disastrous first date on her thirty-seventh birthday, Jess gets mugged in a parking lot and wakes up—not in a Florida hospital, but in a field in Ireland.

The man who finds her, Eamonn, happens to be the estranged brother of the guy she just had that terrible date with.

What follows is a forty-eight-hour journey through Dublin and the Irish countryside that reads less like a meet-cute and more like a slow, aching exhale.

Jess is thirty-seven, stuck in a job that shrinks her, and fresh off the worst birthday date imaginable.

After getting mugged and hitting her head, she regains consciousness in rural Ireland with no phone, no passport, and no explanation.

Eamonn—gruff, bookish, carrying guilt from a criminal past—reluctantly takes her in.

Over a single weekend, they explore Dublin, share vulnerabilities neither has voiced before, and fall into something that feels terrifyingly like love.

But Jess knows this can’t be real. She’s probably in a coma. Right?

Core themes: the courage to want things again, healing through being truly seen, and the possibility that some connections slip through the cracks between worlds.

The Players in This Story

Jess (Protagonist): A thirty-seven-year-old former artist who has perfected the art of disappearing.

Her arc moves from self-protective numbness to the terrifying act of wanting things again. She’s messy, funny, and sometimes frustrating in her passivity—which is precisely the point.

Eamonn (Love Interest): Twenty-nine, a mechanic with an arson conviction and a library of science fiction novels. He’s not the standard romance hero—he’s quieter, heavier, someone who’s done real harm and spent years trying to be better.

His care for Jess shows up in small acts: drying her feet, ordering her food, remembering details she didn’t think she’d shared.

Mari: Jess’s best friend and the voice of grounded pragmatism. She’s the tether to Florida, providing both comic relief and unconditional loyalty.

Niall: The catalyst. His arrogance on that first date sets everything in motion, and his dismissal of his Irish roots contrasts sharply with Eamonn’s complicated relationship to home.

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What the Novel Is Really About

The magical realism isn’t decoration. It’s a vehicle for exploring how people shut themselves off from desire after too many disappointments.

Jess’s “I’m going to stop wanting things” resolution is the real wound; Ireland and Eamonn are the salve.

The book argues that the life you actually want—the one that involves risk and vulnerability and possible heartbreak—is always worth pursuing, even if you have to rebuild yourself to get there.

There’s also a quiet meditation on visibility.

Jess has spent years making herself unseen, and Eamonn’s attention—steady, unflashy, persistent—becomes its own form of healing.

When she finally quits her job and picks up a paintbrush, it’s not because the dream told her to.

It’s because the dream reminded her she was capable of wanting something in the first place.

In Every Possible Way Summary

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

The story opens in Central Florida, where Jess works as a receptionist at a law firm and has gotten dangerously good at making herself small.

Her thirty-seventh birthday becomes a breaking point—she resolves to stop wanting things that never pan out.

That same night, after a cringe-inducing date with a man named Niall, she’s mugged and knocked unconscious.

Then the book shifts. Jess opens her eyes to green hills and a mechanic’s garage in Ireland.

Standing over her is Eamonn, Niall’s younger brother, who shares the same facial structure but none of the arrogance.

He’s wary, private, and clearly burdened by something. With no embassy open and no resources, Jess is stranded.

Eamonn offers to drive her around until things reopen, and what starts as a logistical favor becomes an unplanned tour of Dublin’s pubs, cathedrals, and hidden corners.

Thompson structures the Irish sections like a waking dream. The sensory details are overwhelming—rain on cobblestones, the salt of the Irish Sea, the warmth of a borrowed sweater.

Jess keeps catching glimpses of her hospital room back in Florida, brief flashes that remind her (and us) that her body is lying somewhere with a head injury.

This tension—between the vividness of Ireland and the clinical reality of a coma—drives the emotional engine of the book.

Eamonn reveals his past in pieces: a conviction for arson and car theft as a teenager, years of carrying guilt over his mother’s death, a self-imposed isolation.

Jess, in turn, admits she stopped painting years ago, that she’s been sleepwalking through a life she didn’t choose.

Their conversations have an unguarded quality, the kind of honesty that usually takes months to build. By the time they reach Sligo and visit Yeats’s grave, the connection between them is undeniable.

The novel’s back half deals with the aftermath.

Jess wakes up in Florida, grieves a relationship that technically never happened, and slowly starts rebuilding her life—quitting her job, painting again, letting herself want things.

The resolution, when it comes, validates her experience in a way that feels earned rather than convenient.

Summary by Chapter (SPOILERS)

Part 1: The Inciting Incident & Setup (Chapters 1–5)
Jess’s invisible life in Florida comes into sharp focus through her terrible date with Niall and the subsequent mugging.

When she wakes in Ireland, the sensory shock—real grass, real cold, a real mechanic named Eamonn who somehow knows Niall’s family details—forces both Jess and the reader to question the nature of her experience.

The groundwork is laid for the novel’s central tension: if this is a dream, why does it feel more authentic than her waking life?

Part 2: Navigating Dublin & Building Trust (Chapters 6–15)
Dublin becomes a character in its own right as Eamonn guides Jess through closed embassies, cathedrals, and pubs. The transactional relationship—a ride, a meal—deepens into something personal.

Eamonn discloses his criminal record. Jess shares her artistic abandonment. The Becfola myth is introduced, framing Jess’s displacement as something ancient rather than merely medical.

Each chapter tightens the emotional screw.

Part 3: Intimacy in Transit (Chapters 16–24)
The road trip from Dublin to Sligo accelerates both physical and emotional intimacy. Dance floors, poetry, nightmares, and Yeats’s grave become waypoints.

Jess’s glimpses of her Florida hospital room grow more frequent, creating urgency.

The chemistry between them stops being subtext and becomes unavoidable. The question shifts from “Is this real?” to “Does it matter if it’s not?”

Part 4: Ancestral Roots & The Breaking Point (Chapters 25–34)
Eamonn’s childhood home provides the novel’s emotional anchor.

Watching him repair a boiler, interact with the older couple living there, and finally let Jess into the parts of himself he’s kept locked away, the romance transcends the “dream” premise.

The birthday wish that could end everything looms. The intimacy here is domestic and devastating.

Part 5: Reality, Recovery, and Reunion (Chapters 35–Epilogue)
Jess wakes in a Florida hospital and must grieve a relationship no one believes happened. Her transformation is concrete:

she quits her job, returns to painting, and starts pursuing a life she actually wants.

The Epilogue, told from Eamonn’s point of view, confirms that the connection was mutual and real—a convergence that defied logic but not truth.

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Full Title: In Every Possible Way
Author: Alicia Thompson
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN-13: 979-8217187218
ASIN: B0FRDJZXFP
Print Length: 400 pages
Genres: Contemporary Romance, Magical Realism, Romantic Comedy
Series: Standalone

Note: Based on the digital edition.

What I’m Still Sitting With After Reading

Here’s what got me: this book made a forty-eight-hour romance feel more earned than most novels that span years.

Eamonn as a character stuck with me.

He’s not a fantasy wrapped in an accent.

He’s a man who did stupid, destructive things as a teenager and has been quietly atoning ever since.

His care for Jess shows up in the smallest gestures, and those are the ones that hit hardest.

That said, I understand why some early readers noted the pacing drags around the sixty-percent mark. The Dublin wanderings are lush, but there’s a stretch where you start checking how many pages are left.

And Jess, while relatable in her self-doubt, occasionally reads younger than thirty-seven. Her inner voice feels closer to late twenties, which may or may not bother you depending on what you’re bringing to the book.

But the emotional architecture here is solid. The ending earned the tears it got from multiple reviewers.

When Eamonn shows up in Florida with flowers—having searched for her too—it lands because Thompson spent four hundred pages making you believe that connection was worth crossing an ocean for.

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