Alice wakes up on the floor of the gym with a nasty bump on her head, thinking she’s still a fun-loving-twenty-nine-year-old starting life with her gorgeous husband and pregnant with their first baby. To her disbelief, it soon transpires that the fall has knocked ten years from her memory and she is actually an uptight thirty-nine-year-old whose idea of a good time is a three-hour workout followed by committee meetings with the kind of women she used to despise. How on earth did her life come to this? And more disturbingly, how can she not remember giving birth to three children? Why does her husband suddenly hate her? And what can Alice possibly have done that means her beloved sister will barely speak to her? Seeing herself from fresh eyes, Alice barely recognizes or even likes the person she has become. Can she ever find her way back to the woman she used to be?
I bought this book on a visit to a farm for 75p (how charitable of me) but after seeing it had averaged 4/5 stars on Goodreads, I was ever hopeful. I will say, it wasn’t as awful as I thought it was going to be after I was done with the first half, but I still only gave it 3/5.
One positive of the book was that it gave me a bit of perspective on my life. I’m only 20, so if I woke up thinking I was 10 years old I’d have quite a lot to get used to, but it definitely made me think about the next 10 years! I did feel sorry for Alice and the way her life had gone since she was 29, but I also just found her really naïve and annoying. Maybe that was the point, but I find it really difficult to enjoy a book when I don’t like the main character.
That said, the story also has two other intermittent narrators. Alice’s sister Elisabeth has her own story to tell over the past ten years, and I honestly found myself more interested in that at times than what was going on in Alice’s life. There’s also occasional blog entries from Alice’s grandma Frannie, which I thought were amusing and definitely helped add some much-needed humour!
I didn’t really have a massive issue with the book; it was just too long for the amount of plot. I do think it needed some backstory, but mostly through the first half I was bored. I only carried on reading because I was travelling a lot and reading is a better way to pass the time than staring into space. The ending for me was a real plus point for the book, it was unexpected and I felt like every character was resolved. I wouldn’t be rushing to recommend this book, but it might be up your street if you like easy reads that you can dip in and out of.
