Happy endings were too much for some people, false and cheap,
but hope – hope was honest. Hope was good.
If you’re like me, you don’t look at the images above and think “time travel”, but you know what they say about judging a book by its cover…
Alice is turning 40 and dealing with all the emotional unpacking that ensues with decade-birthdays, as well as dealing with a stagnate job and a sick best friend – her dad, Leonard. After a night of unexpectedly heavy drinking, Alice wakes up to find herself back in her childhood home and back in her sixteen-year-old body. As she tries to figure out how to get back, and how she got there in the first place, Alice has to reckon with various assumptions she had made about a “fulfilled” life, and come to terms with letting go, of the past and of the future.
I really enjoyed Straub’s writing style and quickly immersed myself in Alice’s life and her relationships. While I enjoyed the book from the beginning, it came across as an iteration of 13 Going on 30, and I would say that I was pleasantly entertained rather than hooked. That changed about 70% of the way through the book when the pace suddenly quickened and I was expectantly waiting to see what Alice would do next. In the end, it was a beautiful picture of a father-daughter relationship which challenged the notion that a “successful life” has to be established before your forties.
It was an easy read but that’s not to discredit the merit of its message. I devoured the last 100 pages (the sign of any good book) and would love the chance to follow Alice through more of her story, wherever it takes her.
2% Rating: 7.5/10
Recommend? Yes
Re-Read? Maybe
Time: 1:34
Bonus Content: I don’t often read the acknowledgments at the end, but, after reading this one, I might have to…
Most of all, thank you to my dad, for showing me what fiction could do, and for knowing that the real story is both here and not here, that we are both here and not here, and for receiving this book as it was intended, as a gift.