IF I COULD TURN BACK TIME

Name: IF I COULD TURN BACK TIME
Author: Beth Harbison
ISBN: 978-1-250-04381-8

by Beth Harbison ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015

The fun of Harbison's (Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger, 2013, etc.) conceit is overshadowed by its clichéd...

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A wealthy financier, unhappy with her loveless state, hits her head and wakes up back in high school, with a chance to rewrite her future.

Drinking champagne on a yacht during a party off the coast of Florida, Ramie Phillips knows she has an enviable life. And yet....When a friend announces her pregnancy and best friend Sammy confesses he and his partner are ready to adopt, 38-year-old Ramie wonders how long her job can replace everything else. Drunk and morose, she hits her head while diving overboard and wakes up in the bedroom of her family's Potomac house, 18 again. After the initial shock, Ramie digs into teenage life, now that she knows how it will all turn out. There are the inevitable victories of being 38 in an 18-year-old's body: telling off the mean girls, guilt-free sex with your teenage boyfriend, appreciating youth instead of trying to escape it. And then there's Ramie's father, still alive and well, even though she knows he'll die of a stroke in two years. Ramie isn't very interested in wielding her power (aside from asking her dad to quit smoking or assuring bestie Tanya her latest crush isn't “the one”), focused as she is on her own fears of ending up alone at 38. Instead of breaking up with Brendan as she did the first time she was a teenager, what if she did things differently? The next time she wakes up she's 26 and living an entirely different life than the one she had (no London School of Economics, no brunches in Manhattan) and is instead pregnant—and by all accounts, miserable. But this is not the end of Ramie's journey, which goes somewhere countless other alternate-reality fictions have gone before.

The fun of Harbison's (Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger, 2013, etc.) conceit is overshadowed by its clichéd ending.

Pub Date: July 28, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-250-04381-8

Page Count: 384

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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EVERY TIME YOU GO AWAY
by Beth Harbison

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CHOSE THE WRONG GUY, GAVE HIM THE WRONG FINGER
by Beth Harbison

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WHEN IN DOUBT, ADD BUTTER
by Beth Harbison

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

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THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

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THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.