If you knew what the future held, would you still want to follow the same path?

Think Groundhog's Day. Just when it seems like Kate has hit rock bottom, she wakes up and finds that she has a chance to redo 20 years of her life. With great power, comes difficult decisions. Will Kate fall in love with her husband again? Will she try to save his life or let the cards fall as they are?

This sweet romance gave me the feels and brought up difficult questions. It was almost too much Groundhog's Day for me - done again and again.

Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to read this and give my honest opinion. ( )

The plot of this novel (bereaved wife goes back in time and meets her future husband 'for the first time' again, except that in her mind she is in her 40s and he is 18) should have been off-putting to me. I don't read time travel novels (not that this was exactly time travel) or paranormal stories or any type of speculative fiction. Nevertheless, I loved this novel. Perhaps it was because I also met my now husband very early on in our time at university. As I said, the time shift elements weren't taken too seriously (and the logic of them doesn't hold up to scrutiny anyway), but there was a lot of humour throughout, and also parts that made me think. I especially liked the paragraph where the bereaved heroine Kate realizes that being widowed changes the way you age: you and your partner meet when you are young and age together, and

'there's a part of you that sees yourself through their eyes - a part of you that is still eighteen. And when they die [...] you start to see what other people see instead.'

I loved the section where Kate meets all her university friends again on the first day of term, but in different circumstances from the first time around, and panics about changing the course of history. Toby was lovely and that whole strand was very pleasing to me. The final section was more or less a mad romp and went on too long for me, and the very ending was confusing, even in the context of it not actually necessarily having been time travel, but I would read this again. ( )

This book is EVERYTHING.

The End.

I know I need to say a bit more about it but really it just has it all going on. It's no secret that I love a time travel book so this one was a must read for me. By page 33 I had laughed and cried and I knew this was going to be a pretty special read.

Kate is dealing with grief and she's struggling. Her husband, Luke, has died after 28 years together. One day she finds herself back in 1992 on the day she first met him. Knowing what she knows now she thinks she can change the course of time.

This is the sort of book I want to make notes on as I read. I rarely do that. It made me ponder on the fragility of life, the idea that our fate might be pre-ordained by what's already inside of us. I really enjoy the way time travel gets me thinking.

I loved Kate. I loved how she defied all the barriers of stereotyping in 1992 and 2020. I also loved that she was only a year older than me and so I could really take myself back to 1992 along with her. I thought the author excelled with his supporting characters too; a bunch of more eclectically fabulous people you couldn't hope to find.

The book is divided into three parts: Kate now, in the past, and then returning to the present. I have to say I was not sure how the author could possibly sort out a certain issue in part three and I was just starting to really worry when he pulled it back with aplomb. Not an easy thing to do, wind up a time travel story, but I thought it was superb.

In case you hadn't guessed, I loved the whole damn thing. Robert Webb is a talented writer. I haven't read his memoir but I suspect I would like it, and I'd definitely read any future novels that he writes. He has a wickedly funny blokeiness to his prose but also writes feelings so well. Highly recommended! ( )