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This Time Tomorrow: A Novel
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“The pages brim with tenderness and an appreciation for what we had and who we were. I could not have loved it more."—Ann Patchett
“One of the most moving and intelligent time travel novels I have ever read. Nostalgic, wise, funny, and filled with love."—Gabrielle Zevin
“The kind of book that will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you call the people you love. Exceptional."—Emily Henry
What if you could take a vacation to your past?
With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes and a different kind of love story.
On the eve of her fortieth birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, and her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her sixteenth birthday. But it isn’t just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush—it’s her dad, the vital, charming, forty-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?
“The pages brim with tenderness and an appreciation for what we had and who we were. I could not have loved it more."—Ann Patchett
“One of the most moving and intelligent time travel novels I have ever read. Nostalgic, wise, funny, and filled with love."—Gabrielle Zevin
“The kind of book that will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you call the people you love. Exceptional."—Emily Henry
What if you could take a vacation to your past?
With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes and a different kind of love story.
On the eve of her fortieth birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, and her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her sixteenth birthday. But it isn’t just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush—it’s her dad, the vital, charming, forty-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?
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Community Reviews
This book for me felt too rushed to end the story. Around chapter 5 it just fell flat, too many unresolved stories.
(Insert plot synopsis here, which you can just as easily read on the book jacket/description, but it added here to make this look more in depth)
Yes, lots of us wish we could make our parents healthier because of better choices. I, for one, would love to stop my dad from drinking so much. However, if I were Alice, with a so-so job, no romance, no fun, basically a blah life with just a best friend who has her own life and family, I certainly wouldn't focus on getting my dad to make different choices, especially if I got to do that one day over and over, and come back each time to see that dad was essentially in the same spot. Also - if dad had his own time travel thing going on, well... he can make his own changes. Take life, live it, and stop trying endless do-overs.
Yes, lots of us wish we could make our parents healthier because of better choices. I, for one, would love to stop my dad from drinking so much. However, if I were Alice, with a so-so job, no romance, no fun, basically a blah life with just a best friend who has her own life and family, I certainly wouldn't focus on getting my dad to make different choices, especially if I got to do that one day over and over, and come back each time to see that dad was essentially in the same spot. Also - if dad had his own time travel thing going on, well... he can make his own changes. Take life, live it, and stop trying endless do-overs.
I was worried to start this one, because I knew it had a lot to do with a father/daughter relationship and thinking of anything bad happening to my dad usually brings me to tears pretty fast. I thought this would slam me in the gut and wreck me, but it didn't. I had a hard time getting invested in the story and really sinking into the feelings of the main character, Alice. The whole story is from her perspective and she spends most of it kind of just whining about not being younger, richer, or more successful. She has a stable job that she likes, her own apartment in NYC, and a father and best friend who are devoted to her, that sounds like a lot to be grateful for to me.
When she first goes back in time, a 40 year old mind in a 16 year old body, her main idea for improving her life is to sleep with a teenage boy she had a crush on who she just saw was married with a child in the future.
The book is well written, and the audiobook narrator was very good as well. I just didn't connect with it as much as I had hoped to.
When she first goes back in time, a 40 year old mind in a 16 year old body, her main idea for improving her life is to sleep with a teenage boy she had a crush on who she just saw was married with a child in the future.
The book is well written, and the audiobook narrator was very good as well. I just didn't connect with it as much as I had hoped to.
Charming and heartwarming book about father & daughter, friendships, and all the things that matter (or don't) and what we'd change to save them. Of the what-ifs and should-haves. Of what we could say and what we could take back. I adore Leonard's and Alice's relationship and makes me look back on how my father and I grow through our relationship throughout the years too. The way Emma writes about New York, the 90s, and all the settings are so lively - what a time and place to be alive in! I enjoyed the first two parts more than the latter parts, and wished there's more closure to the book.
Favorite quotes:
"When she was young, she'd thought he was old, and now that he was old, Alice realized how young he'd been."
"Things were always changing, even when they didn't feel like it."
"What age do you think I was best at? Like, if you had to pick me being one age forever, what age would you pick?"
"Everything matters, but you can change your mind. Almost always."
"Maybe that was the trick to life: to notice all the tiny moments in the day when everything else fell away and, for a split second, or maybe even a few seconds, you had no worries, only pleasure, only appreciation of what was right in front of you."
"There was an infinite number of partners in the world, of lovers, of husbands and wives and significant others, but there was only a tiny number of people who set you on your path."
"People changed and they didn't. People evolved and they didn't."
"She loved him now, but not in the same way that she had loved him as a kid, because he wasn't the same and neither was she."
"Fictional stories, that is. Maybe there were bad ones out there, but the food ones, the good ones - those were always true."
"Happy endings were too much for some people, false and cheap, but hope - hope was honest. Hope was good."
Favorite quotes:
"When she was young, she'd thought he was old, and now that he was old, Alice realized how young he'd been."
"Things were always changing, even when they didn't feel like it."
"What age do you think I was best at? Like, if you had to pick me being one age forever, what age would you pick?"
"Everything matters, but you can change your mind. Almost always."
"Maybe that was the trick to life: to notice all the tiny moments in the day when everything else fell away and, for a split second, or maybe even a few seconds, you had no worries, only pleasure, only appreciation of what was right in front of you."
"There was an infinite number of partners in the world, of lovers, of husbands and wives and significant others, but there was only a tiny number of people who set you on your path."
"People changed and they didn't. People evolved and they didn't."
"She loved him now, but not in the same way that she had loved him as a kid, because he wasn't the same and neither was she."
"Fictional stories, that is. Maybe there were bad ones out there, but the food ones, the good ones - those were always true."
"Happy endings were too much for some people, false and cheap, but hope - hope was honest. Hope was good."
I’m not a big time travel fan. Iamdd slowwwwly starting to hate disjointed storylines or multiple perspectives as a trope. But I do have today as a writer, Emma Straub cuts words so classy and clean. I loved much of her wordplay and I did identify at times with Alice. But dear heavens, once she starts time traveling just to find what’s right or better was…ugh. Just ugh. The storyline overall fell apart for me at that point. That said, I bawled like a baby at the afterword
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