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3.39 AVERAGE
3.39 AVERAGE
In my attempt to keep this spoiler free, I need to be short and vague. It's not quite the contemporary romance / drama, I expected. It's about grief in various stages, about friends and families and missed (and gained) chances. About new beginnings and old / new loves and an unexpected action packed spy plot. And with one last surprise right at the end. I absolutely loved it.
I am honestly baffled by this book and the amount of five stars it got. Personally, it made no sense to me whatsoever. It looks more like a diary where someone would write bits of a story as a brain dump, but on the whole, is absolutely a mess.
The three parts in which it is split do not merge into one other. There are too many characters not necessarily useful to the story. Most of them have an intricated description, but they somehow stay on a two-dimension where it is almost impossible to visualize them.
The third part is just ridiculous. I wouldn't even know where to start.
The end is a joke. No explanations, take the things as they are and digest them.
It was only for the voice of Oliva Colman reading that I kept going.
The three parts in which it is split do not merge into one other. There are too many characters not necessarily useful to the story. Most of them have an intricated description, but they somehow stay on a two-dimension where it is almost impossible to visualize them.
The third part is just ridiculous. I wouldn't even know where to start.
The end is a joke. No explanations
Spoiler
Kate lives 9 months of her life without even realizing that her time-travelling has changed completely her future, as much as she has never been married to Luc. So who was she married to? If she was married at all. How come she "disappeared", if she is still friends with Toby?It was only for the voice of Oliva Colman reading that I kept going.
A mixed bag of emotions going through this one, I’m not sure what I expected, but the last few chapters had me screaming - with laughter that is!
An intriguing plot with a lot of potential, but each part needed more room to breathe. It was such a short book that it felt like each chapter was rushing full-steam towards the ending, and I would have preferred to spend longer "in York" watching Kate slowly piece herself back together. Instead, she seemed to go from 0 to 100 very quickly. Part 3 in particular felt like a dramatic shift in tone, and while it was fun and wrapped up some loose ends from Part 1, it would have been easier to digest if it hadn't been so sudden.
The story might have been better as a screenplay than a novel - it was very action-driven and the scenes were very well described so it was easy to picture them, and it could have worked well as a slightly over-the-top rom-com.
The story might have been better as a screenplay than a novel - it was very action-driven and the scenes were very well described so it was easy to picture them, and it could have worked well as a slightly over-the-top rom-com.
Really wanted to like this, as his non-fiction memoir and reflection on identity and gender was very good. The novel does have some funny moments. But mostly it’s just poor, from prose and plot to a general lack of purpose or message. Sorry for the harsh review!
I wonder if it's called 'Come Again' because that was my reaction after reading it and wondering how it made any sense at all. The blurb on the back of the book only covers 30% of the story, I liked that part of the story. The university third of the book had me hooked and unable to put it down, I'd planned to rate it 4 stars at that point, but then it turned into some Russian mafia novel that wasn't at all mentioned on the blurb and something I wouldn't choose to read. The whole book is really disjoined and I still don't understand what happened. Such a shame!
“Come Again”, by Robert Webb (yes ‘that’ one), is described as the story of a grieving widow, Kate. Her husband and partner of decades dropped dead from a tumour no-one knew about. In the blurb, it talks about time travelling and putting right what once went wrong, which is frankly right up my Quantum Leap alley.
Except that’s not quite what you get. All of that is there, yes, but there’s a sub plot about deep fakes and Russia which makes it feel a bit like two books mashed into one. I enjoyed both but didn’t get enough of either, quite honestly.
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I liked the premise, and there are *SPOILERS* ahead, so please look away from this paragraph if you don’t want to know the details of the story….
Kate goes back in time, whether through drunken stupor fantasy or in real life, to the day she met her husband in the first week of university. She realises that the middle aged woman in an 18 year old body does not feel the same as the first time around, and in fact, Luke is kind of a dick. Her best friend and the man who has pined after their whole lives, Toby, is suddenly so much more attractive. I thought that was really interesting – it’s not a live happily ever after story, it’s a recognition that experience and life comes to us all whether we like it or not, and actually, the love of your life twenty years ago might not be the love of your life the second time around.
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I liked Kate as a character, and thought the deep fake, ethics of her job as someone who makes internet scandals disappear for less than savoury customers, was really interesting. I would like to see another book with her in it, to be honest, and preferably without the lovey dovey stuff now we’ve got that out of the way. It made me think of Kate Atkinson’s hapless, wrong place/right time ex copper character, Jackson Brodie.
I haven’t read Webb’s first book, ‘How not to be a boy’, and I think I would like to, after this. His writing style, at least in fiction, is not quite my thing, but I did like some of the characterisation and some of the ideas were really interesting. Recommended for someone looking for something a bit different to the standard romcom/new start midlife crisis book.
As always, thanks to Netgalley for the ARC and Canongate for the access.
Except that’s not quite what you get. All of that is there, yes, but there’s a sub plot about deep fakes and Russia which makes it feel a bit like two books mashed into one. I enjoyed both but didn’t get enough of either, quite honestly.
***********************
I liked the premise, and there are *SPOILERS* ahead, so please look away from this paragraph if you don’t want to know the details of the story….
Kate goes back in time, whether through drunken stupor fantasy or in real life, to the day she met her husband in the first week of university. She realises that the middle aged woman in an 18 year old body does not feel the same as the first time around, and in fact, Luke is kind of a dick. Her best friend and the man who has pined after their whole lives, Toby, is suddenly so much more attractive. I thought that was really interesting – it’s not a live happily ever after story, it’s a recognition that experience and life comes to us all whether we like it or not, and actually, the love of your life twenty years ago might not be the love of your life the second time around.
***********************************
I liked Kate as a character, and thought the deep fake, ethics of her job as someone who makes internet scandals disappear for less than savoury customers, was really interesting. I would like to see another book with her in it, to be honest, and preferably without the lovey dovey stuff now we’ve got that out of the way. It made me think of Kate Atkinson’s hapless, wrong place/right time ex copper character, Jackson Brodie.
I haven’t read Webb’s first book, ‘How not to be a boy’, and I think I would like to, after this. His writing style, at least in fiction, is not quite my thing, but I did like some of the characterisation and some of the ideas were really interesting. Recommended for someone looking for something a bit different to the standard romcom/new start midlife crisis book.
As always, thanks to Netgalley for the ARC and Canongate for the access.
3.5
Yay, incredibly enough I finished a book. It's been two weeks since I last touched a book - I blame it on the Christmas/holidays craziness and me discovering another musician to become obsessed with (I love music even more than reading). Anyway, imagine my horror to discover I had 4 audiobooks waiting in my library overdrive, Come Again being one of them. I confess I couldn't remember what/who prompted me to add it to my holds; upon noticing it was very brief I thought I should pause the music and try to listen to it. Let's just say that had my family been believers they would have praised god. I'm an all or nothing kind of person, so for the past two weeks, I've been playing the same two albums on repeat for hours on end. Anyway, timing is everything and this book was the right kind of novel I could concentrate on. Having the delightful Olivia Coleman as the narrator made it all that more special. I didn't even grumble about some aspects that needed a good dose of suspension of disbelief, something I usually struggle with.
I should say what this was about. Forty-five-year-old Kate had recently lost her husband - the love of her life. Her grief and guilt are enormous. She now hates her job - she's a computer expert at some sort of history and internet cleaning company, which deals with cleaning some very nasty people's online presence. She's kind of had enough and doesn't feel like there's anything to keep her going. This sounds like a downer of a book but it wasn't.
Was this perfect? Far from it. Honestly, given my complete avoidance of anything book related in the past two weeks, I almost feel elated I finished a book, be it just an audiobook.
Back to listening to music.
Wishing you all a great 2022.
Yay, incredibly enough I finished a book. It's been two weeks since I last touched a book - I blame it on the Christmas/holidays craziness and me discovering another musician to become obsessed with (I love music even more than reading). Anyway, imagine my horror to discover I had 4 audiobooks waiting in my library overdrive, Come Again being one of them. I confess I couldn't remember what/who prompted me to add it to my holds; upon noticing it was very brief I thought I should pause the music and try to listen to it. Let's just say that had my family been believers they would have praised god. I'm an all or nothing kind of person, so for the past two weeks, I've been playing the same two albums on repeat for hours on end. Anyway, timing is everything and this book was the right kind of novel I could concentrate on. Having the delightful Olivia Coleman as the narrator made it all that more special. I didn't even grumble about some aspects that needed a good dose of suspension of disbelief, something I usually struggle with.
I should say what this was about. Forty-five-year-old Kate had recently lost her husband - the love of her life. Her grief and guilt are enormous. She now hates her job - she's a computer expert at some sort of history and internet cleaning company, which deals with cleaning some very nasty people's online presence. She's kind of had enough and doesn't feel like there's anything to keep her going. This sounds like a downer of a book but it wasn't.
Was this perfect? Far from it. Honestly, given my complete avoidance of anything book related in the past two weeks, I almost feel elated I finished a book, be it just an audiobook.
Back to listening to music.
Wishing you all a great 2022.
You can pretty much call Robert Webb’s Come Again as “The Time Traveller’s Husband”. For his fictional debut novel, Webb gives a brilliant nostalgic, retro trip to the early 1990s England. The grief of losing a spouse is especially well portrayed & it has an interesting turn of using the time travelling trope as a journey of self-discovery & honesty. I especially didn’t even question the genre-bursting (action-adventure-espionage-comedy) change of tone in the latter half of the novel. I was surprisingly alright with its pace. Haven’t read Webb’s How Not To Be A Boy, but it’ll be on my bookshelf in the future!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this audio book in exchange for an honest review
What a great story about Kate who lost Luke the love of hEr life a year earlier. In her grief she had pushed everyone in her life away, blamed herself for Luke’s death and was determined to end her life until she woke up pre Luke, back in college and 18 again.
This beautiful story made me laugh and cry as I listened to Kate relive her life in college and struggle to reconcile her 18 year old self to her 45 year old self. There were a few surprises that I still don’t know how I feel about but I still thought this was a great story and enjoyed listening to it
What a great story about Kate who lost Luke the love of hEr life a year earlier. In her grief she had pushed everyone in her life away, blamed herself for Luke’s death and was determined to end her life until she woke up pre Luke, back in college and 18 again.
This beautiful story made me laugh and cry as I listened to Kate relive her life in college and struggle to reconcile her 18 year old self to her 45 year old self. There were a few surprises that I still don’t know how I feel about but I still thought this was a great story and enjoyed listening to it