Thursday 19 March 2015

Irish Fiction Week Guest Review: Nicola Doherty - If I Could Turn Back Time

Reviewed by Tanya Phillips

What if you found The One, then lost him again? 


Or not so much lost him as became the neurotic, needy girlfriend from hell. The girl who tried to make him choose between her and his job, and got seriously paranoid about his relationship with his female best friend... 

Zoë Kennedy knows she doesn't deserve another chance with David Fitzgerald. But if there's the tiniest possibility of making things right, she'll snatch it. Even if it means breaking the laws of physics to do so...

Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback

Firstly thank you Sophie Hedley for sending me this fantastic book after a recent hospital admission.  It was my first book by this author and I thought what a great opportunity for Irish Week.  The reviews on this book have all been great and I was not disappointed when I read it.

The title is thought provoking and it kept catching my youngest daughters imagination and she was constantly asking what would you do different if you could go back mum?  Perhaps it’s a question we all think about time to time and wonder if things would be different if you had done or said something different!

The book starts on the run up to Christmas with, Zoe Kennedy an Irish born girl from Dublin, working in Marley’s Department store as sales assistant but really wanting to be involved with buying the products for the shop floor.  You discover that she has recently broken up with her boyfriend the Doctor David Fitzgerald and is mourning the break up and wishing she had done things differently.  Whilst returning a purse to an elderly lady the lady makes a strange remark about how “if you stand in front of the windows the week before Christmas, and make a wish, you’ll get your heart’s desire”.  Well guess what Zoe does that night when she leaves work and goes out for a drink.  Yes she stands in front of the department windows display and wishes she could have David back.

The next morning Zoe wakes up in David’s flat and discovers that she has time travelled and that she gets the opportunity to replay her life different in the last few months.  Of course now she comes with the knowledge of knowing what the future holds.  She uses this to her advantage in making decisions, in love and in work to get her where she wants to be in life.  All it took was knowledge and going back in time to not be clingy and needy, to accept David’s friendship with his female best friend.  Where work is concerned of course she knows what will sell well on the run up to Christmas as she has been there and sold it.

However is all this knowledge and getting what you think you want in life the best and the right decision?  Would you use things to your advantage?

The character of Zoe and her antics you can understand but at times I really wanted to shout at her and say open your eyes.  I loved the character of Max, her room mate and friend of David’s he gives a balance to the book and also showed that not all scientists are geeks and that they do know how to have fun.

The story is romantic and the ending intriguing.  A great book by an Irish author.  Give it a go.

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