Very interesting take on time travel, and whether we can change our future or past. Every mother will relate to Maria's pain at discovering she's no longer living in her very-pregnant body (with her third child) and the agony she experiences realizing she may never see those children or her husband again.

It's a clever plot twist, and as I read, I tried placing how the characters would all tie together near the end. I guessed a couple of things, but there were plenty of surprises. If you like to read about time travel, you'll really enjoy this clever, heart-wrenching story! Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me a copy of this book. ( )

I love well done time travel books and this certainly was one. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t stop. A great debut novel and certainly an author I will be reading again someday. ( )

4.5 stars Beautifully written with a heartbreaking choice one could never imagine.

Can she change time and still keep what it’s given her?
——
( )

This was really good! Maria is a frazzled mom, pregnant with her third child, and working as a psychiatrist. She wakes up one day to find herself in her 17-year-old body and is desperate to get back to her husband and children. I thought that the story was quite original and I loved that it made me wonder what I would do if I found myself in Maria’s situation.

Maria was a great character. I quickly related to her as she was dealing with the struggles of having young children. I have always said that I wish that I had known what I know now in my teens but after reading this book, I am not so sure. I really did enjoy seeing her figure out exactly what she needed to do in the teen life that she was thrown into. I loved that there were a few surprises worked into the story along with some incredibly heartfelt moments. I thought that the epilogue was especially well done.

I listened to the audiobook and thought that Cassandra Campbell did a fantastic job with the narration. I have listened to her work in the past and feel like she is a very versatile narrator. I thought that she did a great job with the character voices and added just the right amount of emotion to her reading. I am certain that her narration added a lot to this story.

I would not hesitate to recommend this book to others. I found this to be a very enjoyable story with a really original premise. I look forward to reading more of Sarah Adalakha’s work in the future.

I received a review copy of this book from Forge books and borrowed a copy of the audiobook from my local library. ( )

Ugh, I wanted to be more satisfied with this. I love my time travel, I love my alternate paths, this was super pacy. But! The plotting! I have so many issues with the plotting!

Jenny as a character seemed entirely unnecessary. Was she there just to provide a neat, weirdly connceted ending? There was no clear connection as to how Beth's death led to Maria and Will meeting. The whole process of returning was under explained and left too many questions. The instalove between Henry and Maria, we all know how I feel about instalove. The Blaise thing wasn't that great.

Rachel accidentally sets off a gun? And murders her boss? Because she's using a gun to break into a storage unit??? And she broke in yet no one heard a gun shot????? I'm sorry, what?????? At least make it on purpose. That's absolutely ridiculous and a waste of more interesting character development.

I think Adlakha has a lot of potential here, but if I were editing I would remove Jenny's sections entirely, make the tragic accident a proper accident, give Will a whole new tragedy and give him and Maria a whole new meeting that was in some way connected to said tragedy and make the whole choice an actual Sophie's choice. I'd also give Maria some friends and people she could turn to other than random old men who, despite being very sweet, don't really have any purpose. And I'd make the psychiatrist studying time travel evil, or at least give him a motive other than "for science" which is pretty reasonable.

Sigh, now I've thought too much about this and I'm going to have to 2 star it for all the plot holes. BUT I did read through it super quickly; it's pacy and engaging. ( )