Once and Again
a heart-breaking, unforgettable novel of love, family and second chances
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 10 Mar 2026
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- 5,49 €
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- Pre-Order
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- 5,49 €
Publisher Description
'Brilliant, original, and sure to leave you shoving a copy into someone's hands so you can talk about it' JODI PICOULT, #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
The women of the Novak family were each born with a gift: they can, just once, turn back time.
Lauren has known since she was fifteen that her mother Marcella saved Lauren's father from a deadly car accident. Ever since, her power spent, Marcella has lived in fear of what she won't be able to reverse. Her own mother, Sylvia, is her polar opposite: a free-spirited iconoclast with a glamorous past she only hints at. Lauren has spent her life between these two role models - and waiting for her own catastrophe to strike.
Then one summer, Lauren's husband takes a job in New York and she moves back into her childhood home on the shores of Malibu. Lauren looks forward to surfing with her dad again and perhaps repairing an unspoken fracture in her relationship with her mother. What she doesn't expect is for the boy next door to return home as well: Stone, Lauren's first love, who broke her heart nearly a decade before.
As Lauren falls into familiar patterns, with her family and, more dangerously, Stone, she finds herself thinking about all the choices, large and small, that have brought her to this moment. And wondering, finally, if one of them should be undone.
READERS LOVE REBECCA SERLE
'I was hooked from the start' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'So beautiful' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Unexpected but amazing' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Beautiful and devastating' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'An emotional rollercoaster' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'I couldn't put it down' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Moving, thought-provoking and compelling' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At birth, the women of the Novak family are given a silver ticket that allows them one chance to turn back time, in this disappointing tale from Serle (In Five Years). When Lauren's mother was 15, she used hers to save Lauren's father from a deadly car crash, and her mother has worried about his ailing heart ever since, knowing she's used up her only chance to save him. Lauren, who grew up surfing with her father near their modest Malibu house, is 37 and dealing with expensive and grueling fertility treatments. While Leo, her husband of three years, spends a summer in New York City to advance his film career, Lauren visits her childhood home with her parents and grandmother. There, she takes up surfing again and rekindles a romance with an old flame, Stone. Feeling disconnected from herself and pushing Leo further away, she wonders if perhaps there is a past choice she can undo. The author introduces heavy themes of family bonds and fertility struggles, but the story is undone by clunky characterizations—especially that of Stone, who's described as "humble" and vain in the span of a paragraph—and by an ending that feels unfaithful to the plot. Serle's clever concept doesn't quite translate into magic on the page.
