Members of the Vise Library were selected to review If I could Turn Back Time. We received a copy of Beth Harbison's book for an honest review.
About the book:
Told with Beth Harbison's wit and warmth, If I Could Turn Back Time is the fantasy of every woman who has ever thought, "If I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, I'd do things sodifferently..."
Thirty-seven year old Ramie Phillips has led a very successful life. She made her fortune and now she hob nobs with the very rich and occasionally the semi-famous, and she enjoys luxuries she only dreamed of as a middle-class kid growing up in Potomac, Maryland. But despite it all, she can't ignore the fact that she isn't necessarily happy. In fact, lately Ramie has begun to feel more than a little empty.
On a boat with friends off the Florida coast, she tries to fight her feelings of discontent with steel will and hard liquor. No one even notices as she gets up and goes to the diving board and dives off...
Suddenly Ramie is waking up, straining to understand a voice calling in the distance...It's her mother: "Wake up! You're going to be late for school again. I'm not writing a note this time..."
Ramie finds herself back on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, with a second chance to see the people she's lost and change the choices she regrets. How did she get back here? Has she gone off the deep end? Is she really back in time? Above all, she'll have to answer the question that no one else can: What it is that she really wants from the past, and for her future?
Ramie is celebrating her thirty-eighth birthday on a yacht with friends. She has a "dream" life, but she just isn't happy. Something happens to her while she is on that boat and when she wakes up she is her eighteen year old self again. She realizes she is reliving her past and wonders if she can change her future. She is relishing the extra time with her father (who died while she was in college) and reunites with her high school boyfriend. She wonders if she made a mistake in breaking up with him before going off to school. This story does a great job showing us that sometimes there may be such a thing as fate, no matter what choices you make. I wish I could dive more into this book, but it would give away too many of the good details. Just know that this is Harbison's funniest and most thought provoking book yet. The ending is not predictable and I loved that the main character eventually gets what she wants (but it is completely different than what she thought she wanted). There was one passage that made me laugh out loud that involves someone's baby announcement. I loved it all! This book comes out later this month, so make sure you get your hands on our copy when it is added to our catalog!
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