I’ve enjoyed Rachel Lynn Solomon’s previous books, especially Weather Girl, and I love how she creates flawed main characters and incorporates mental health representation, without letting it take over the plot. She does this again in What Happens in Amsterdam.

Teenagers Dani Dorfman and Dutch student, Wouter van Leeuwen, met when he stayed with Dani’s family as part of an exchange visit. They became each other’s everything, falling in love, and experiencing their firsts together. When Wouter left Los Angeles at the end of his exchange, he cut off contact with Dani, and his rejection of her wounded them both. For Dani especially, it affected her ability to have healthy relationships and colours her view of the world.

As the novel begins, over ten years after the exchange, Dani leaves LA and her overprotective family to make a new start in Amsterdam. Her job at a (dodgy) start-up comes with an apartment, but when she gets there, the job is awful and the apartment is a dump. Still, Dani is determined to make a go of it because she’s finally – finally – escaped her suffocating parents. She was born prematurely and she has a facial port-wine stain, asthma and anxiety, some depression – and her parents have always wrapped her in cotton wool. One night she crashes her bike into Wouter, now a physiotherapist and living in his grandmother’s apartment building on the Prinzengracht (fantastic address!) He offers Dani an empty flat in the building.

Even after her job implodes and her apartment floods, Dani is determined to stay in Amsterdam, so even with all her conflicted feelings about Wouter, she accepts his help, and even accepts his impulsive (and perhaps unrealistic) offer of a visa (green card) marriage. This is a huge step, and to me, feels a little inexplicable – even though Dani isn’t ready to return to the US.

There are some charming interludes as the two of them explore the city and visit galleries and walk by the canals. I was able to map their movements, which added a lighter dimension and enlivened the tone. Amsterdam is a city I know well, and the descriptions are charming and immersive.

The action centres on Dani and Wouter living in his apartment and faking a marriage when they don’t know each other as adults and they still haven’t talked about the way they broke up all those years ago. They conceal the marriage from their families and of course, it all blows up spectacularly, but it doesn’t take long to sort everything out.

I did struggle with Dani. A realistic depiction of depression can make a character seem flat, and this happens here. She is holding on very tightly to the stories she has told herself, and she persists in that, even when it’s obvious that Wouter is all in.

Even so, I appreciated that there isn’t a magic fix for Dani’s depression. Her character development is about opening up to Wouter and his family, and pushing back against the overprotectiveness of her own parents. It’s not all about Dani though, as Wouter also has some family reckoning to go through.

While What Happens in Amsterdam has some angst, it’s low in drama and this combination made it an enjoyable read.