Twice in a Lifetime
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The Time Traveler's Wife meets Oona Out of Order in this imaginative and moving debut novel of a love more powerful than time.
Isla has fled the city for small-town Missouri in the wake of a painful and exhausting year. With her chronic anxiety at a fever pitch, the last thing she expects is to meet a genuine romantic prospect. And she doesn’t. But she does get a text from a man who seems to think he’s her husband. Obviously, a wrong number—except when she points this out, the mystery texter sends back a picture. Of them—on their wedding day.
Isla cautiously starts up a texting relationship with her maybe-hoax, maybe-husband Ewan, who claims to be reaching out from a few years into the future. Ewan knows Isla incredibly well, and seems to love her exactly as she is, which she can hardly fathom. But he’s also grieving, because in the future, he and Isla are no longer together.
Ewan is texting back through time to save her from a fate he is unwilling to share—and all she can do to prevent that fate is to learn to be happy, now, in the body she has, with the mind she has. The only trouble is the steps she takes in that direction might be steps away from a future with Ewan.
Melissa Baron’s time-crossed romance features a quintessentially endearing and brave protagonist, and an engrossing plot that will keep you turning pages until its breathtaking finish.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Baron explores parallel realities in her heart-wrenching debut romance. After overworked Chicago graphic designer Isla Abbott has a breakdown following her mother's death, she decides to relocate to a bungalow just outside of St. Louis, hoping for a fresh start. There she starts receiving mysterious texts from a man named Ewan Park, who claims to be her husband from the future reaching back in time to prevent her eventual death by suicide. Though at first skeptical, Isla comes to believe Ewan and hopes to avoid her original fate by changing the circumstances of her first meeting with Ewan in the present, thus setting them on a different trajectory. It works, and for a time, Isla and Ewan thrive—Ewan expertly supports Isla through her frequent panic attacks, and the pair quickly fall in love. But they can't avoid the apparently fated accident that is the long-term decider, one way or another, of whether Isla and Ewan get their happily ever after. The aching regret of what might be shines through each alternate reality as this couple fights for each other, and a series of shocking twists at the end will steal readers' breath one scene after another. The captivating characters, skillful plotting, and sensitive handling of mental illness make this a knockout.
