Prepare your tissues: My Oxford Year has arrived on Netflix, and it’s already breaking hearts.
Starring Sofia Carson as Anna De la Vega and Corey Mylchreest as Jamie Davenport, this romantic drama is based on the bestselling 2018 novel My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan. The film brings poetry, love, loss, and purpose together in a story that’s deeply personal, and devastatingly beautiful.
Here’s everything to know about the plot, themes, and unforgettable ending of My Oxford Year.
Spoiler Warning: This article contains full plot details and the ending of My Oxford Year, now streaming on Netflix.
The Plot: A Dream Year That Changes Everything
Anna De la Vega has her life mapped out. She studied English at Cornell, landed a job offer at Goldman Sachs, and deferred it for one year to pursue her dream of studying poetry at Oxford. Just one year, a break before the real world.
But on her first rainy day in Oxford, she’s soaked by a vintage car and has a tense run-in with its charming but elusive driver. That man turns out to be Jamie Davenport, the substitute professor in her literature class.
Jamie opens his first lesson with cake and a warning: nothing is permanent,not passions, not careers, not love. He believes poetry should be lived, not just read, and urges his students to embrace fleeting moments. Anna, pragmatic and career-focused, clashes with his worldview. She wants security. He welcomes the chaos.
But their connection deepens, first at a pub, then over greasy kebabs, on long walks, and late-night poetry talks. Eventually, they fall for each other. They try to keep things light, but it’s never really casual.
At one point, Jamie encourages Anna to plan a “grand tour” of Europe before returning to America, a proper farewell to her Oxford year. He maps it out for her like a romantic dare: start in Paris and get drunk by the Seine, spend the night on a gondola in Venice, watch the sunset by the temple of Poseidon in Greece, and visit the hidden sanctuary Our Lord in the Attic in Amsterdam’s red-light district. He even hints that they might go together.
But the tone shifts dramatically when Anna unexpectedly finds Jamie at home, not with another woman, but hooked up to an IV. Jamie has terminal cancer.
Love in the Messiest Moments
Anna learns the truth: Jamie’s brother, Eddie, battled the same rare illness and ultimately chose to stop treatment when it became too painful and futile. Their father, William Davenport, couldn’t accept that decision, and now, faced with Jamie making the same choice, their relationship has fractured all over again. The woman Anna initially believed was a romantic rival, Cecilia, turns out to be Eddie’s former partner. She’s remained close to the family and to Jamie, helping him navigate the same heartbreaking path she once walked with Eddie.
Despite the heartbreak, Anna stays. She gives up her Goldman Sachs plan and spends her birthday with Jamie and friends at his family’s estate. In a bittersweet moment, she gifts Jamie’s father a model car kit, the same kind he used to build with his sons, and helps reopen the fragile bond between them.
As Jamie’s condition worsens, a bout of pneumonia threatens his already-weakened body. His father finally accepts his son’s choice: no more treatment. Let nature take its course.
The Ending: A Goodbye Tour, Imagined and Real
In the final scenes, Jamie and Anna talk about taking that European tour together. But we quickly realize, it never happens. Instead, Anna travels alone: Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, Greece. She visits each spot Jamie dreamed of, recording moments and memories, keeping him close.
When she returns to Oxford, she doesn’t go back to finance. She stays, and becomes a professor, just like Jamie. Her first class begins the way his did: with cake, poetry, and a challenge to live deliberately.
Poetry, she tells her students, must be felt, not just studied. Just like love. Just like life.
Themes and Parallels: A Modern Echo of Me Before You
Though based on Julia Whelan’s 2018 novel, My Oxford Year echoes the emotional structure of Me Before You, the 2012 bestseller by Jojo Moyes, that was later adapted into a 2016 film starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin. In both, a young woman meets a man carrying deep personal grief and a terminal diagnosis. In both, one transformative year changes everything.
But My Oxford Year isn’t just about loss. It’s about choice. Anna chooses not to try to save Jamie, but to love him, fully and without illusions. And when he’s gone, she doesn’t return to the life she planned. She moves forward with the one that now feels true.
A Story That Stays
Set at one of the world’s oldest universities, My Oxford Year poses timeless questions: What does it mean to live with intention? To surrender control? To love when there are no guarantees?
It’s not a fairy tale. But it’s honest, and that’s what makes it linger.
If you’ve found yourself searching for Before Me or My Oxford Year, you’re not alone. These stories share a quiet emotional thread: a driven young woman, an unexpected romance, and a man whose time is running out. While Whelan’s novel stands firmly on its own, it resonates with the same themes that made Moyes’ story so enduring. Neither promises forever. But both remind us that love can still change everything.
