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All Aboard ‘Never Been Shipped’: Read An Exclusive Excerpt of Alicia Thompson’s New Romance
Rockstars are about to rock the boat—in more ways than one—in Alicia Thompson’s Never Been Shipped, out June 10.
The Art of Catching Feelings author’s new romance follows Micah, who has a complicated relationship with music. As a teenager, her band found fame after being featured on a popular TV show, but they had a spectacular falling out. Over a decade later, the band is reuniting for one last performance on a themed cruise.
This reunion will bring her face-to-face with her former bandmate and best friend, John. Once they’re onboard the ship, Micah and John are inevitably drawn together like a dyad. However, there’s also a boatload of tension with the band. During these five days at sea, Micah and John will have to decide if they’re finally in tune romantically, or if this second chance is hitting all the wrong notes.
Never Been Shipped is the perfect summer beach read for fans of Daisy Jones & The Six. Swooon has an exclusive excerpt of Never Been Shipped to give you a taste of the rockstar romance, which you can preorder now.
Read the exclusive Never Been Shipped excerpt below:
“You live here?” she asked, not meaning the question to come out so snotty but landing somewhere in that vicinity anyway.
“Yeah.”
“Convenient.”
He just looked at her, and she immediately saw how stupid that had been to say, too. What, like she thought he’d stayed in the same city as their record label just on the off chance that over a decade later, they might schedule a meeting and he’d be able to roll right out of bed and drive a couple blocks over?
“You’d think you’d be able to make the meeting on time, then,” she added, suddenly considering that side of things. He’d been the only one of them who hadn’t had to catch a flight for this thing, and he’d been the one to arrive way past fashionably late. “What happened to putting the punk in punctuality?”
“What?”
“That’s what you used to say, when—” She sighed. “Never mind.”
He put his hands in his pockets, rocking back a little on his heels.
“Where are you living now?” he asked. “L.A.?”
There was no real curiosity in his tone, which rankled her. Just a neutral politeness, like he was going through the motions of small talk at a dinner party.
“Still L.A.,” she said. “We can’t all make big changes, I guess.” His brow furrowed, like he didn’t get that, and she gestured toward him. “Orlando,” she said. “The white shirt. I’m pretty sure you’re taller.”
“The white—” He glanced down at himself, like he was only just realizing what he was wearing. She wished she hadn’t mentioned it. It felt too revealing, that she’d even noticed. “I doubt I’m taller. You’re taller.”
“It’s the shoes,” she said, and then before she had time to think how strange it would be to do, she leaned down to unzip the sides, stepping out of them until she was standing in her socked feet on the pavement. She took a step toward John, to where her toes almost touched the fronts of his Converse, the top of her head at his eye level. Micah had always been tall, for a woman—with the shoes they’d been almost exactly the same height, but now he had a couple inches on her five‑ten frame.
He didn’t smell like sweat. He smelled like . . . John. She didn’t even know how to describe it, but it was instantly familiar to her, from all those times they’d sat next to each other on a couch, all the times he’d leaned over her, crossing a song off the set list and writing another one in its place.
All the times they’d slept together. Literally slept—Micah had always struggled with insomnia, but for whatever reason she’d had an easier time on the nights when John had opened his hotel room door and let her slide into bed with him. Occasional naps on the bus, curled onto the same tiny bunk. That had all ended, of course, once she’d started dating Ryder. Then she’d always had someone to share a bed with, and yet it had never felt quite the same.
There’d been a time when she could’ve buried her hands in his hair to mess it up, to brush it out, just because she felt like it. She had the strongest urge to do it now, just to reach up and tousle his already tousled curls, to stretch one out and see it spring back into place. She had the strongest urge to run her hands along his broad shoulders, like she was an aunt marveling at how much her nephew had grown since last Christmas, like she was a wife checking the fit of a suit before a big presentation at work. She wanted to know if she could still get him to giggle if she found the spot right under his ear. She wanted to know if he ever let himself cry, the way she’d only seen him do once when they were thirteen and then never again after.
“What else?” John said.
Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she sucked in her bottom lip, running her tongue over it. John tracked the movement, and when his gaze lifted back up his brown eyes looked darker somehow, closer to black. Had he been reading her mind?
“What else what?”
“You still live in L.A., you’re still just as tall,” he said. “What else hasn’t changed? Give me one more.”
Micah felt like her life had been stagnant for so long, but put on the spot she couldn’t think of a single thing to say. “I still like pineapple on my pizza.”
That caused a sudden grin to flash across his face, gone so fast she could’ve blinked and missed it. But she knew if she closed her eyes she’d see the afterimage, would feel the warm glow of triumph in her chest later.
“I do, too, now,” he said. “My—yeah, I came around.”
What had he been about to say? His girlfriend? His wife? She couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t wear a ring—she’d fixated a lot on people’s hands during the meeting, watching them flip through the papers, gesture while the person was speaking, tap impatiently on the table (that was Steve, so to be fair, maybe less impatience than the fact that he was always tapping on something). Steve was the only one of them who seemed to have gotten married in the intervening years, although Micah supposed there was a possibility that some people had gotten divorced, or just didn’t wear a ring.
She almost asked John outright, but of course it wasn’t any business of hers. So what if he was dating someone. They had never been that to each other, anyway, and for over a decade they hadn’t been anything.
“What else?” she asked instead.
“Orlando, white shirt, pineapple,” he said, counting them off on his fingers. “Those are my three things.”
“Give me three that haven’t changed.”
“My height,” he said, which made her roll her eyes. Yes, they’d covered that. “I still play a mean guitar, if I do say so myself.”
She smiled. “I bet you do.” And truthfully, she’d never doubted it. If there was one person she trusted implicitly to keep it all together on the cruise, to stand exactly where he was supposed to and play every note pitch perfect, it was John.
“And I still . . .” He trailed off, staring down at her. His expression had barely changed, and yet she felt like something had shifted, but she didn’t know what. His lips were slightly parted, his eyes so close she could see the flecks of gold in his irises. She wanted him to say something real, something that would crack them wide open, that mattered more than just preferred pizza toppings or where they were living now.
He let out a breath. “I still don’t get it,” he said. “The thing with Elvis.”
She tried to smile at that one, too, but it felt a little twisted and false. “Well,” she said. “No accounting for taste.”
From Never Been Shipped, published by arrangement with Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Alicia Thompson.
