44 pages • 1 hour read
Lynn PainterThe Do-Over
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
Emilie and Nick begin their tribute to Eric by riding scooters and then renting bikes to visit the big slides in the park. They then feed birdseed to the ducks before grabbing pizza at Zio’s Pizza. Once again, they’re brought back to the topic of love. Nick isn’t interested in dating anyone because he doesn’t “have time for all of the emotional bullshit a person has to put out in order to make another person happy” (206). In response to her prying questions, Nick asks how she felt like she was in love with Josh earlier in the day but now has all but forgotten about him. Emilie avoids the question. Nick asks her to tell him one thing about Josh that irritates her. Emilie admits to hating that Josh sets custom ringtones for everyone in his contact list. He finds it hilarious that each time he texts Emilie, she hears the stallion sound he set as her ringtone. Even though the ringtone irritates Emilie, she always pretends to love it to spare Josh’s feelings.
Nick decides their Day of No Consequences should include a kiss. Emilie eagerly initiates. Though she has come to like him over the day, she is aware of his hesitation to pursue anything romantic and knows that everything between them will be forgotten when the day resets again at midnight. Nick brings Emilie to her dad’s house so she can sneak in and grab a key to her grandma’s house where she plans to stay the night to avoid an angry confrontation with her dad. When Nick drops her off at Grandma Max’s and Emilie goes inside for the night, she realizes she’s still wearing his jacket.
Chapter 17 Summary
Emilie wakes up in her grandma’s house to her very angry father at 1:15 am. When she realizes it is finally February 15th, the day after Valentine’s Day, Emilie does not look forward to facing the consequences of the previous day’s actions.
Chapter 18 Summary
When Emilie returns to her dad’s house, they find her mother waiting. Emilie watches her parents fight over the topic of Emilie’s recent behavior. Emilie’s mom takes her to her house, promptly grounding her and sending her to bed. The next morning, Emilie completely avoids her routine of looking at her planner for the day. Without a car or a phone to text her friends, Emilie is stuck walking to school.
Chapter 19 Summary
At school, Emilie notices many people eyeing her with newfound respect due to her intercom outburst the day before. Her friends, Chris and Rox, express pride in her actions. Emilie notices that Nick is not present at school and worries over how they left things the night before. Instead, Josh finds Emilie and confronts her about humiliating him over the intercom. Emilie admits to knowing he’s involved with his ex, Macy, but Josh swears he and Macy never kissed in the parking lot in his car. However, he does admit things are complicated between him and Macy.
The next day, Nick shows up to school but avoids looking at or speaking to Emilie in their shared classes. Emilie spends the rest of the day devastated over Nick’s rejection and avoidance. At the end of the school day, Emilie offers to help Nick when she sees him having issues with his truck. Nick refuses her help, and when Emilie calls him out on his behavior, Nick tells her that he is not interested in a romantic relationship. He calls the Day of No Consequences a fantasy, but Emilie doesn’t believe it was as “pretend” as he claims. Hurt by his rejection, Emilie returns his jacket to him and walks away.
Chapter 20 Summary
Emilie cries over Nick when she gets home. At dinner with her mom and stepdad, Todd, they ask her about her well-being. Emilie begins sobbing at the table and tells her mom about all her struggles lately. As a result, her mother ungrounds her and promises to consider a way to make it possible for Emilie to live with both her mother and her father’s work once he moves to Texas.
On the following Monday, Emilie dresses how she feels instead of according to her carefully crafted wardrobe. She doesn’t even bother looking at her planner before heading to school. During chemistry class with Nick, Josh texts Emilie asking to meet up and talk after school. Nick shows irritation at Emilie exchanging texts with Josh, but she reminds him that it is no longer any of his business.
Josh offers Emilie a ride home from school so they can talk. Josh reaffirms nothing happened with Macy but admits that he was wrong to take her on a coffee run in the first place when he knew she still had feelings for him. They mutually agree that while they were happy together, they now know they were only perfect on paper and not a true romantic match with actual chemistry. When Josh drops Emilie off at home, Josh asks her about Nick Stark. He reveals that Nick approached him earlier and warned Josh against hurting Emilie if she decided to take him back. Emilie tells Josh that Nick may like her, but not enough to do anything about it.
Emilie’s mom and Todd sit her down for a talk. They reveal that her dad can work remotely until August so that Emilie can finish her junior year. After the school year ends, she can decide whether she wants to move with him or stay with her mother.
Chapter 21 Summary
A few weeks later, on March 4, Emilie celebrates her birthday with her friends at school. In chemistry, Nick tells Emilie happy birthday, but things are still tense and distant between them. After school, Emilie goes with her friends to a restaurant downtown where they begin playing a game. They sit at a window booth and begin to hypothesize the backstories of every person who walks by. When Nick happens to walk by the window, her friends recite a planned backstory in which “he’s actually a nice guy who is wracked with regret for being a jerk to someone he truly cares about […] he had a perfect day with the perfect girl […] but his cynical heart refused to believe it could last so he pushed her away” (277). They reveal that he is regretful and misses Emilie badly but wishes to give her a birthday present.
Emilie goes outside to meet Nick, who hands her a box. When she opens it, she finds the purple unicorn cake she wanted for her ninth birthday inside. Nick admits that he wants to pursue a romantic relationship with Emilie. He was holding himself back due to unresolved grief over Eric but has been seeing a therapist to work through it. Emilie accepts Nick’s offer to drive her home and offers her the same coat as he had every Valentine’s Day before. Emilie discovers it is Eric’s jacket and wonders if it was the reason for the time-loop. She wore the jacket on the first Valentine’s Day but fell asleep with it on in the last.
Chapters 16-21 Analysis
In these final chapters, Painter finalizes Emilie’s character arc. Directly after her break-up with Josh, Emilie thinks: “Josh was the perfect boyfriend for [her] on paper: smart, motivated, and charming. But [she] didn’t realize until [she] watched him kiss Macy that the paper didn’t always translate. Josh was the guy that the girl [she] wanted to be should want. [Her] throat felt tight as [she] thought about how wrong [she]’d been, how wrong [she] still was. If planning didn’t root out true love, and fate didn’t either, was it even a tangible thing one could hope for?” (265-266). However, after her Day of No Consequences with Nick, she discovers what actual love feels like and learns for herself how wrong her preconceived notions were.
Emilie realizes The Futility of Excessive Planning and The Reality of Imperfection by the novel’s end. By Chapter 18, the day after Valentine’s Day, Emilie consciously avoids looking at her planner, symbolizing her rejection of the excessive control she once sought over her life. Painter further evidences this theme and The Importance of Authenticity—both critical aspects of Emilie’s changed characterization—when Emilie dresses how she feels in Chapter 20, abandoning her carefully curated wardrobe. Her fashion choices also enable her to embrace authenticity in other aspects beyond physical appearance. The more she makes the decisions she wants, the more respect and recognition she gets from her peers at school who are finally getting to see the real Emilie. She looks back fondly on her Day of No Consequences—despite the serious consequences she must still face—believing that while it was a wild and ridiculous day, it allowed her to live as she desired rather than appeasing others. Even when her parents screamed at her and grounded her, Emilie felt a sense of contentment. She realizes she must start living for herself instead of for other people and what they want her to do.
These final chapters include the traditional third-act breakup arc prevalent within romance novels. Painter evidences this in Nick’s rejection of Emilie in the weeks after the time-loop ends. The breakup is unique in that they weren’t necessarily together and unlike many romance novels, it does not occur because of miscommunication but rather personal conflict. Nick admits to this internal conflict during their Day of No Consequences when he says to Emilie, “I don’t have time for all of the emotional bullshit a person has to put out in order to make another person happy. It’d be worse if I dated people and then just pissed them off by being a cold, distant asshole, wouldn’t it?” (207). Following this conversation, Nick also experiences character development in this section. His refusal to pursue a romantic relationship with Emilie after the Day of No Consequences, as seen in Chapter 19, stems from his unresolved grief following the death of his brother, Eric. His belief that happiness is fleeting and his dedication to avoid hurting so deeply again prevent him from embracing the joy he feels around Emilie. However, by Chapter 21, Nick’s gesture of giving Emilie the purple unicorn cake she wanted as a child implies he’s achieving his character growth outside of the main narrative. The thoughtfulness of his gift to Emilie also serves as one last moment of comparison between him and Josh, further establishing the two as foil love interests and evidencing the greater compatibility Nick shares with Emilie.
The resolution in Chapter 21 also includes the grand gesture trope, a staple of the romance genre. Nick’s grand gesture involves gifting Emilie the purple unicorn cake she didn’t get on her ninth birthday. This grand show of affection prompts the third-act resolution where Emilie and Nick find reconciliation and a happily ever after. The novel’s ending also embodies the romance genre through its equal focus on mutual romance and individual growth.
However, Painter also departs from the typical romance genre ending through the way she approaches her happily ever after. Rather than tying up loose ends and revealing the characters’ fate, Painter leaves it open-ended. Emilie feels content with not attending a summer program at all because she enjoys the idea of taking a much-needed break. However, Painter does not reveal what this means for her future. Similarly, there is no agreement that Emilie and Nick will begin dating. Rather, the text offers a reconciliation that looks promising.
Related Titles
By Lynn Painter
