By Nathaniel Fieldstone
Hello readers,
To those of you who have been following me along, thank you very much. To those of you just joining me, welcome! I set out to review every book referenced on the back cover of Emily Henry’s Book Lovers planning to then go back to my first blurb review (Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult) and do reviews of blurbs from the cover of that book, but then something happened. When looking up the final book on my list, All Adults Here by Emma Straub I accidentally put a hold on This Time Tomorrow also by Emma Straub (the source of the error no doubt). I looked at the back cover of This Time Tomorrow and who did I find quoted on the back praising it but Emily Henry. It was then I knew I found the title I needed to book end one chapter of the project and move onto the next. So starting next month I’ll be pivoting, getting into a new novel in a new genre, a fantasy called Legends and Lattes. I don’t know anything about this book other than it comes very highly recommended from the folks at the r/fantasy subreddit. That one has fewer blurbs in so will come around much faster than Book Lovers, after which I am hoping to move to another genre entirely. If you all have any suggestions please let us at the GALA Herald know. Until then…happy reading!
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
I really liked this book. I knew I would when I started, as someone who lives with a decent amount of regret in my own life I imagined I’d enjoy an exploration of what it would be like to revisit one’s own past. In this case we revisit the past of Alice, a New York private school admissions officer, who on the eve of her fortieth birthday is suddenly sent back to reliving her 16th. But this book was so much more than that. It changed in unexpected ways as it went but in a manner that felt real, true to life in ways that only good sci fi can. It didn’t deliver shock value, it delivered something better: a good story. I’m being intentionally vague about the plot here because I don’t want to ruin it, like in life this story unfolds slowly and in fits and starts, unexpected things happen and decisions have consequences.
I could go on longer about the characters (her father, her best friend and her love interest) and the setting (New York city, back and forth between 2022 and 1996) but I won’t because if I did, they’d sound painfully generic. Which touches on what this book does, in such an extraordinary way? It makes a life, an ordinary life, the stuff of literature. Highly recommend.
