I Never Write Reviews...

It's true. I never, well very rarely, review books.

I will sometimes tell my twitter or facebook fans if I've enjoyed a book, but this weekend I downloaded The Other Us by Fiona Harper.

Hands up, I download a lot of books. I don't always read them. This, however, was by someone I've known for a long time but it wasn't just that. This book sounded very different to anything she'd written before and I was intrigued.

Here's the blurb...

If you could turn back time, would you choose a different life?

Forty-something Maggie is facing some hard truths. Her only child has flown the nest for university and, without her daughter in the house, she’s realising her life, and her marriage to Dan, is more than a little stale.

When she spots an announcement on Facebook about a uni reunion, she can’t help wondering what happened to Jude Hanson. The same night Dan proposed, Jude asked Maggie to run away with him, and she starts to wonder how different her life might have been if she’d broken Dan’s heart and taken Jude up on his offer.

Wondering turns into fantasising, and then one morning fantasising turns into reality. Maggie wakes up and discovers she’s back in 1992 and twenty-one again. Is she brave enough to choose the future she really wants, and if she is, will the grass be any greener on the other side of the fence?

Two men. Two very different possible futures. But is there only once chance at happiness?

I am not a reviewer but here goes. 

My Saturday began with a hunt in the cupboard under the stairs for a load of batteries that needed charging, a handsaw and that machine that makes your legs tingle. A quick steam of the kitchen floor followed by breakfast and a dash to Sainsburys to catch up on the weekly shop. After that there was a stint in the garden putting in plants I'd bought the day before, clearing a clematis intent on world domination and replacing sad containers full of weeds with some petunias to brighten the day of anyone who walks past our garden. 

That done I was a bit pooped to tell you the truth, so I made coffee, the dh put on the F1 practice session and I opened up The Other Us. Just half an hour.I told myself. I had to stop when the dh prodded me to make lunch but then it was back to the book. Apart from stopping for cups of tea, something to eat, that was it. Me and my Kindle on the sofa. Do Not Disturb..

At one point my battery warning light came on and I moved so that I could plug it in and carry on reading. The dh went to bed. I read until I reached the last page when I went straight to Amazon and gave it 5 fabulous stars.

I can't remember the last time I did that.

The Other Us is an extraordinary book. Imaginative, emotional, especially evocative for anyone who grew up in the 90s. Full of questions, lots of answers... At one point there were tears running down my cheeks. 

If I ran a bookclub - I don't - it would be top of my list. 
Demand it at your local bookshop, order it from Amazon, pick it up in your local supermarket, but read it.