Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date: July 19th 2012
ISBN13: 9781444712117
First Line - "What's on your mind?"
After a bad break up, doesn't every girl want the same things?
* For her ex-boyfriend to stay single forever...
* Or maybe emigrate, to a remote, uninhabited island?
* Better still, that she'd never met him in the first place!
But what if one of those wishes came true?
Tess is heartbroken when Seb breaks up with her and can't help blaming herself. If only she'd done things differently. If only she could make right all her regrets... But she can't. It's over. She has to forget about him. Drunk and upset on New Year's Eve she wishes she'd never met him.
But when she wakes up to discover this dream has come true, she realises she has a chance. To do it all over again. And to get it right this time...
First, a disclaimer: I'm a newcomer to Chick Lit. I read quite a bit but not in this genre so don't have a lot to judge this against.
That said, I thought this was a great read. My usual reads are urban/paranormal and come in black covers or apocalyptic fiction which have slavering zombies on the cover and as a rule anything with a pastel coloured covered doesn't even register when I'm scanning the shelves at the book shop or library. Lately though I'm getting burned out on the whole vampire/werewolf/demon thing and when I was offered a pastel covered book a while back I thought I'd give it a whirl to see what I was missing (that book was Out of the Blue by Belinda Jones) and I really enjoyed it so started checking out other pastel covers. I find that I really like the ones that have cartoony covers and that's what drew me to this one by Alexandra Potter. That, and the fact that Tesco's had it for under £4.
Anyhoo, the book... I liked it. I wasn't sure at the start and got a bit lost with the mechanics of the wish fulfillment but by the end I was hooked and couldn't wait to see how it all came together.
It's the story of Tess who has recently been dumped by her boyfriend and she's heartbroken. She makes a wish on New Year's Eve that she'd never met him so that she doesn't have to suffer the pain of losing him and her wish comes true! It's as if they didn't meet. However, it's everyone else who forgets she ever met him, Tess herself doesn't forget and when she's given a second chance to do it all again, with knowledge of all the mistakes from before she's thrilled.
I have watched my fair share of 'RomCom' in movie form and this book is just like watching one of those. (I think this would transfer really well onto film and I'd definitely pay to watch it). All through the book there are little clues dropped and loose ends and it's not until the very end that they all fit together and tie up and along the way there's plenty of laughs and misunderstandings.
I did guess the ending within the first 3 chapters but that didn't spoil anything for me, I just looked forward to it happening. There are a few other twists throughout and I guessed a couple of those too but it was still a great read. I liked that all the loose ends were tied up nicely.
Some of the characters were hateful and I loved how they were dealt with in the end, likewise I liked how the underdogs were treated too. I just liked it all around really. As a newbie I'm a fan of the genre so far :)
I hope all the pastel covers I read from now on are as good as this!
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