Book Review | Come Again

Happy pub day to this book! 🥳 Strap yourself in for a time travelling romance espionage adventure novel! Yep you read that right. The book is divided into three, very distinct parts, each loosely addressing each of these genres.

The first starts off very low and bleak. Kate has just lost her husband of 28 years, to a rare form of cancer that would have been growing since they met as freshman at uni. She’s resigned to her fate, drinking, lonely, angry and suicidal.

Then, quick as a flash, she’s back at Uni, inhabiting her 18 year old body, getting reacquainted with her life long friends. She recognises this predicament as a blessing, vowing to do everything exactly as she did, so she ends up with Luke again. Except this time, she’ll warn him of the tumour, and extend his life. Because if you’d have the chance, you’d do everything the same too. Right?!

I don’t want to give too much away as this is one of those books where the element of surprise works well, however the normal questions of fate and intervention that pop up in time travel stories are all here. I didn’t warm to many of the characters until about halfway through the story, probably due to the bleakness of the introduction, however I really enjoyed the nostalgia of reliving the 90’s. Kate’s youth was fun to read about and took me back to my own time at uni. I did find the transitions between the genres a little jarring, however they did make for some laugh out loud moments- to be expected with comedian Robert Webb. Given the ambitious subject matter while clocking in under 300 pages, there was quite a bit of detail lacking for me in some parts, and a little too much detail in others.

Come Again is a quick, fun look at what happens if we get a second chance at love and life. Sometimes, living through moments a second time with age and wisdom on our side allows us to see things for what they really were. If you could go back, is there one single moment in time you’d try to influence?

This one is out today. Thanks very much to @allenandunwin for sending this my way for review. 🥰