This Time Tomorrow

Enough with the romance for awhile. This one was pure fiction: This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub.

Goodreads Stats

Why I Read This Book/How I Heard About It

This book was on a list of Goodreads Choices for Fiction. It looked interesting and, by that I mean, the cover was pretty, so I added it to my "Want to Read" shelf and put it on Hold in the Libby app.

Basic Summary

What if you could take a vacation to your past?

This book was billed as a time travel story from a New York Times bestselling author.

From the back of the book:

"On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice's life isn't terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn't exactly the one she expected. She's happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn't just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it's her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?"

First Impressions

Alice's character is so similar to me, I instantly took a liking to her. She's turning 40, working as an administrator at a school (a sort of boring job, but decent enough to earn a living), and she has one very good friend. Her dad is sick and on his deathbed and she's wondering if she should have made different choices in her life, if she should be more successful than she feels on her 40th birthday.

Suddenly, Alice is sent back to her 16th birthday in 1996 - the year I graduated high school! So, not only is the adult Alice my kindred spirit, but the kid version is too! I was pretty proud that I understood every single pop culture reference from 1996. It was a fun trip down memory lane for Alice, and for me.

Final Thoughts

One might think this book is a ripoff of the movie 13 Going On 30 or Big or Back to the Future or any of those tropes where people wake up as teenage versions of themselves. In a clever way, Emma Straub subverts this by having Alice acknowledge all of these movies when she realizes she is in the same situation as her favorite movie characters.

Kind of like how J.K. Rowling handles all the "questions" in Harry Potter by writing them into the story. Example: if Hermione is so good at magic, why can't she just magic up some food when she and Harry and Ron are in the wilderness in The Deathly Hallows? As soon as the reader thinks this question, Hermione answers it in the text.

The best part about this book is the focus on Alice's father. So many of these tropes show the person going back to redo their high school romance and it's all about that. Certainly, this does happen in this book. But it's not the focus or even the main story.

From the point of view of a woman watching her father fade away on his deathbed, Straub rightly intuits that this character wouldn't be as invested in a romantic relationship as she would be in squeezing in every last moment she can find with a father who is healthy and vibrant and still able to talk to her. When we lose a parent, we lose all the stories of their life that they never told us. If time machines were real, and we could go back and ask our deceased parents to tell us stories of their lives, how many of us in our late 40s and 50s would sign up in a heartbeat for that time machine trip? I haven't seen this explored in lighthearted fiction like this before and I think it's creative and so refreshing.

Lots of little twists and turns that I won't spill the beans on...this story gets very involved. But it's for you to discover when you read this book. I absolutely recommend you do.

Rating on Goodreads

I rated this book 4 out of 5 stars.

My rating method:

• I rarely rate books 5 stars. I save this for the absolute best books I've read. You know the ones...the ones that you can't get out of your head, even after you've finished them. The ones you think about for weeks afterwards.

• If a book is really, really good, I'll give it 4 stars. If you see a 4-star rating from me, I'd definitely recommend it to you to read.

• If it's just OK, it gets 3 stars. Basically, it means I could take it or leave it. I'd probably read it again because it wasn't terrible. But not like a favorite or anything.

• If I rate it 1 or 2 stars, I would not recommend anyone read it. It either didn't hold my interest or I couldn't relate to the characters/plot.