Book Review – Maybe Next Time

You know that I am always up for a good time travel story, and that was what I was hoping for with Maybe Next Time by Cesca Major.

A lot of times, when I see that a book was read by a “book club,” I will make sure to read what is about to see if it peaks my interest. From the cover, I thought it would be some sort of romance book, and in a way it was. However, it was not like those with the muscular guys with their hair blowing in the wind on the cover.

Here is the Goodreads synopsis:

One Day meets Groundhog Day, in this heartwarming and emotionally poignant novel about a stressed woman who must relive the same day over and over, keeping her family and work life from imploding as she attempts to spare her husband from an unfortunate fate.

It is an ordinary Monday and harried London literary agent Emma is flying out of the door as usual. Preoccupied with work and her ever growing to-do list, she fails to notice her lovely husband Dan seems bereft, her son can barely meet her eye, and her daughter won’t go near her. Even the dog seems sad.

She is far too busy, buried deep in her phone; social media alerts pinging; clients messaging with “emergencies”; keeping track of a dozen WhatsApp groups about the kids’ sports, school, playdates, all of it. Her whole day is frantic—what else is new—and as she rushes back through the door for dinner, Dan is still upset. They fight, and he walks out, desolate, dragging their poor dog around the block. Just as she realizes it is their anniversary and she has forgotten, again, she hears the screech of brakes.

Dan is dead.

The next day Emma wakes up… and Dan is alive. And it’s Monday again. And again. And again.

Emma tries desperately to change the course of fate by doing different things each time she wakes up: leaving WhatsApp, telling her boss where to get off, writing to Dan, listening to her kids, reaching out to forgotten friends, getting drunk and buying out Prada. But will Emma have the chance to find herself again, remember what she likes about her job, reconnect with her children, love her husband? Will this be enough to change the fate they seem destined for?

A moving “What if” story of what it is to be a woman in the modern world—never feeling we’re getting it quite right—about learning to slow down and appreciate life that is sure to resonate with women’s fiction fans.

That is not to say that it will only resonate with woman, in my opinion. It could have easily been told from the male point of view as well. That being said, let me give you my thoughts.

This really wasn’t a bad book. However, I found it going on a bit long at some points. It almost seemed like we relived the same day a few times more than was necessary. Eventually, though, Emma begins to see things a bit differently and things move along. When this happens, there are little things that happen with other characters that begin to really add to the story.

No spoilers here, but when you get to the end of the book, it ends in such a way where you stop and think about what is going to happen after that last period in the paragraph. To me, this can be a good thing or a bad thing. Some reviews raved about the ending while others absolutely hated it.

Admittedly, I thought it should have been more. As the book goes on, we get to know more about some of the minor characters in it. The problem I had with it was that I was left with questions about what happened next in their stories. This is where I felt that some of the “replays” of Emma’s Mondays could have been left out, while filling the reader in on what happened to those characters before (or after) Emma’s last scene.

I will let you decide for yourself. Let me know if you wind up reading this.

3 out of 5 stars.