What if you could do it all over again?
Jennifer
Wright is pretty sure her husband doesn’t love her anymore. She and Max
used to be the perfect couple, but the pressures of work and kids have
pulled them in opposite directions. Now, Jen is full of “what if”
questions about whether her bland, suburban existence is all she was
ever destined for.
When
a terrible accident sends Jen into a coma, she is able to see what her
life could have been if she had run off to Australia with the handsome,
dangerous man she met on vacation, or if she had stayed with her
workaholic college boyfriend. Would she ever have loved another child as
much as she loves her daughters? Could she have become rich? More than
anything, Jen wants to do the right thing for her family. But what she
discovers may leave her with even more questions about the choices she’s
made, and no easy answers about what to do next.
IndieBound | Kindle | Nook
Excerpt from If You’re Not the One:
Stay with us, Jennifer. Come on, love, you can do this. Hang in there.”
Why
was everyone yelling? She was so tired. All she wanted to do was sleep.
She was so close to being able to slip away, yet wasn’t being allowed to. She felt very muddled and had a vague sense of being bullied.
“Patient’s suffering agonal respirations and has a CO2 of eleven. Probably in anaphylactic shock. Let’s commence CPR.”
“Jen, please hang in there. I’m so, so sorry. I love you.”
“Sorry, Mr. Wright. Can you stay out of the way? It’s very important.”
What is Max doing here?
she wondered. For a second, she was tempted to open her eyes, but she
wasn’t able to because a burning sensation swept through her so
violently, she would have done anything to make it stop. It was pain on a
level she never would have thought possible. Every cell in her body was
on fire, doused in hot, white agony. Then, as quickly as it showed
itself, it subsided, and once again she reverted to her numb state of
nothingness.
Then
someone was applying pressure to her that hurt in a different way. She
didn’t want to be awake anymore. She craved peace and sensed a way she
could achieve it. It would definitely remove the pain, and any further
possibility of it.
But
she wasn’t sure she wanted to go that way either. She reflected for a
second, as though she were suspended in time and space, floating almost.
She wasn’t ready for that, which meant there was only one option left.
So, once more, she sank back into the gray fog, more cries of panic
sounded around her.
As
the paramedics went about their frenzied business of trying to save her
life, the strangest things were happening in Jennifer’s bruised brain.
None
of us can really comprehend what the human brain is capable of doing,
in the same way that Jennifer had no clue as to the true capabilities of
her laptop. All she tended to use her PC for was to write emails, do a
bit of shopping, or social networking, meaning its dual core processor
was never fully taken advantage of. She was always stunned when Max, who
was far more tech-savvy than her, did some simple task on her computer
in a way that made her realize she was only ever utilizing around 10
percent of what it could do, if only she knew how to operate it
properly.
It’s
the same with the human brain, only on a far grander and more
mysterious scale, its true power being so tricky to tap. Most of its
work and activity happens at a deeply subconscious level, and yet even
beyond that, there are areas of it that we never unearth, even when
dreaming.
Psychics
do better than most. Whether you believe in them or not, they at least
have more awareness of the various possibilities that we could utilize if only we tried.
Right
at that second, within Jennifer’s skull, a series of lightning-fast
connections were being made, ones that she never would have been privy
to if her head hadn’t made contact with the ground
quite as brutally as it had. Something extraordinary was happening.
quite as brutally as it had. Something extraordinary was happening.
As
her synapses furiously connected and fused, three tunnels of white
light suddenly showed themselves to her. There was one to the left, one
straight ahead, and one to the right. Is this what death looks like?
Instinct told her it was something different, and suddenly she knew,
without needing to be told, that rather than leading her to the
afterlife, instead, these tunnels represented different lives she could
so easily have led.
What
she was being given here was a gift. The gift of being able to see what
life would have been like had she chosen another route at three
different points in her life. And so it was that Jennifer allowed
herself to fall into a deep and very informative coma. As her own
private miracle started, she began to glide toward the first tunnel, the
one to the left, which was swirling with clouds of light at its
entrance. This was the one marked Aidan.
What I thought about If You're Not the One
Jennifer is having a bit of a crisis. The book starts with her running away from her husband Max, after some altercation. The reader doesn't know the details of what happened between them, but it's bad enough to have her running out of house to her friend, only to get seriously injured along the way.
While Jennifer is in a coma, she falls down a rabbit hole of sorts, one that allows her to see what her life would have been like had she stayed with any one of the three boyfriends she had before she married Max. There's Aiden the party boy, Tim the driven geek, and Steve. To be honest, I don't even remember much about Steve.
I loved the premise of this story -- it's a mashup of Peggy Sue Got Married and a Dickens A Christmas Carol but the execution was confusing and didn't draw me into the story as much as I would have liked. There are too many flash back and flash forwards that kept me from getting invested in Jennifer's final decision. I mostly thought that Jennifer really needed some good counseling, especially after she wakes from her coma and has to face Max and what happened between them.
So overall, a good premise with a troublesome execution. No sure how I feel about the ending which is a bit surprising and unexpected. I did like that all was not as it seemed with her four different men she could have ended up with, but I really didn't get invested in Jennifer's fate like I would have liked.
ARC provided for review.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
About Jemma Forte:
Jemma
Forte was a Disney Channel host in the UK for five years, and has gone
on to host shows for ITV, BBC1, BBC2, and other channels in the UK. She
lives in London with her family.
No comments:
Post a Comment