#AmReading

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The Good Part by Sophie Cousens
Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on November 7, 2023
Age/Genres: Adult, Fiction, Time Travel

Goodreads

By the New York Times bestselling author of Just Haven't Met You Yet, a downtrodden twenty-six-year-old wakes up to the life she’s always wanted, but is it really a dream come true?

At twenty-six, Lucy Young is tired. Tired of fetching coffees for senior TV producers, tired of going on disastrous dates, and definitely tired of living in a damp flat share with flatmates who never buy toilet roll. She could quit her job for a better living, but she’s not ready to give up on her dreams. Not just yet. After another diabolical date lands her in a sudden storm and no money for bus fare, Lucy finds herself seeking shelter in a tiny shop, where she stumbles upon a curious wishing machine. Pushing her last coin into the slot, Lucy closes her eyes and wishes with everything she’s got: Please, let me skip to the good part of my life.

When she wakes the next morning to a handsome man, a ring on her finger, a high-powered job, and storybook perfect little boy and baby girl, Lucy can’t believe this is real—especially when she looks in the mirror, and staring back is her own forty-something face. Has she really skipped ahead to the future she’s always wanted, or has she simply forgotten a huge chunk of her life? And as Lucy begins to embrace this new life and new relationships, she’ll have to ask herself: Can she go back, and if so, does she want to?

Everything seemed to be going wrong in Lucy's life. Living in a dump, working at a job where she got a fake promotion, enduring awful dates, and penny pinching had Lucy wanting to get to the good part of her life. When she stumbled upon a wishing machine and made her request, she woke up sixteen years in the future to find she was married to a wonderful man, living in a beautiful home, and the Queen Badger at work. But Lucy found herself missing those sixteen years and began to wonder if skipping to the good part was really the best choice for her.

Sophie Cousens has become a favorite author of mine, and this book is a stellar example of why. She brilliantly blends humor, warmth, and heartbreak to craft stories that never fail to fill my heart to bursting. I loved all the nods to those time-jump films we know and love. From the allusion to Zoltar from Big, to a Freaky Friday moment when Lucy observes her middle aged self. These moments made me smile, bringing to mind all those greats, but it also made me appreciate how Cousens spun this in her own way.

We are lucky, we are here, when others are not. I wear the gray in my hair as a badge of honor, the privilege of aging.

I think many people have wished to get to the good parts of their lives. That part where everything is going smoothly and according to plan. But, how good is the good part if we never experienced the painful or disappointing parts? That's one aspect of the story that really stood out to me. It's all our experiences, the ups and downs, the good and the bad, that shape us and our lives, and skipping any part of those experiences would change the emotions attached to the present.

I am getting all deep here, but as I have already mentioned, this book had Cousens' signature humor. There were so many fun and slap-sticky moments associated with Lucy adapting to her new life in the future. But, I think what delighted me most, was watching her fall in love with her husband and her children.

In the end, I was so invested in Lucy and this life of her's. When I read this one part, I burst out in tears because I loved this life for her and her family.

I don't want to miss our first kiss, our first fight, our first anything. And I'll take the heartache and the horror and the losses too, the fear of not knowing how it will all come to be, because that is life, in all its glorious, messy Technicolor. And I know I am so lucky to be here, and that every breath I take is the good part.

Overall: This was a beautiful reminder to embrace life and recognize the little things that make it special. I laughed, I cried, and I had an amazing time with Lucy as she learned to recognize all the good parts.

*ARC PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER

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How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
Published by Penguin Books on June 11, 2019
Age/Genres: Adult, Fiction

Goodreads

"She smiled a soft, troubled smile and I felt the whole world slipping away, and I wanted to slip with it, to go wherever she was going... I had existed whole years without her, but that was all it had been. An existence. A book with no words."

Tom Hazard has just moved back to London, his old home, to settle down and become a high school history teacher. And on his first day at school, he meets a captivating French teacher at his school who seems fascinated by him. But Tom has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. Tom has lived history--performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an ordinary life.

Unfortunately for Tom, the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: Never fall in love. As painful memories of his past and the erratic behavior of the Society's watchful leader threaten to derail his new life and romance, the one thing he can't have just happens to be the one thing that might save him. Tom will have to decide once and for all whether to remain stuck in the past, or finally begin living in the present.

How to Stop Time tells a love story across the ages--and for the ages--about a man lost in time, the woman who could save him, and the lifetimes it can take to learn how to live. It is a bighearted, wildly original novel about losing and finding yourself, the inevitability of change, and how with enough time to learn, we just might find happiness.

My second book by Haig is a hit! Once again, Haig created a thought provoking story that touched my heart.

How to Stop Time is about Tom who was 439 years old. He had a condition where after the age of 11, he began to age very slowly. He wasn't exactly immortal, but he faced many of the same issues they do. Tom attempted to live a "regular" life at first which resulted in some good and bad consequences. He had fallen in love and had a child, but due to the superstitions of the time, he was forced to leave his family in order to protect them. This was a scar that Tom carried with him for hundreds of years. It was a hole in his heart where the loneliness festered.

Tom spent centuries searching for his daughter, who also aged slowly, while keeping people at arm's length. This was no hard task given that Tom had to change his life and identity every eight years to avoid the dangers of being discovered. This stress and sadness hung over the story, and it made my heart ache for Tom. At one point in the present day timeline, he had a big choice to make. This was the result of a rather interesting exploration about what it means to live. Is it simply "being" for many years? I know my own answer to that question, and it is pretty much in agreement with what Tom discovered for himself.

All that aside, this story was also an adventure. I loved Tom's recollections of years past and the way historical bits were woven into it. He seemed to have had some of the most incredible chance encounters too. Think - Forrest Gump, and the way historical events and figures organically worked their way into that tale.

Overall, this was a highly entertaining story that took me through the ages and reminded me to live and love with reckless abandon.

Would you want to skip to the good part?
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