Take a photo of a barcode or cover
beate251 's review for:
Counting Down To You
by Sarah J. Harris
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Thank you to NetGalley, Amazon Publishing and Lake Union Publishing for this ARC.
Sophie and Adam used to be childhood sweethearts. Then Sophie got into a car accident that killed their friend Lily, and retreated from her friendship group as she felt responsible for the accident.
She also received a brain injury and now sees numbers everywhere - from numbers of tiles in a bathroom to how many days someone has left to live. It's not something you can go broadcasting around, and it drives Sophie mad.
Ten years later she has become a quilter doing memory blankets, and one day Adam, now a teacher with an eight year old daughter, comes to the shop she works in. She realises she still has feelings for him but does everything to put him off when she realises his number is only 24 days. She has tried before to save people with a low number but has never succeeded as they just died a different way instead, Iike her beloved mentor Joan.
There are flashbacks to the time of the accident ten years ago, and both Adam and Sophie get a POV. This works well to get to know both of them. I don't know much about maths and Möbius strips but I loved the side characters - Adam's daughter Wren, Joan, Sophie's boss Bernard and old Walter who'd rather know what fate has in store for him.
While I had nothing against Sophie's weird magical realism condition, I thought it was solved a little too quickly and illogically at the end, like the author didn't know how to actually deal with Adam's probable death. Also that stalker thing was a bit weird and overblown.
It was lovely how Sophie and Adam found together again and became a little family unit with Wren, plus Adam and Wren getting a closer father-daughter bond too. I liked this a lot more than the author's previous book "Meet Me on the Bridge". The book reads well and is a nice slow-burn second chances romance, if you don't mind magical realism and maths talk.
Sophie and Adam used to be childhood sweethearts. Then Sophie got into a car accident that killed their friend Lily, and retreated from her friendship group as she felt responsible for the accident.
She also received a brain injury and now sees numbers everywhere - from numbers of tiles in a bathroom to how many days someone has left to live. It's not something you can go broadcasting around, and it drives Sophie mad.
Ten years later she has become a quilter doing memory blankets, and one day Adam, now a teacher with an eight year old daughter, comes to the shop she works in. She realises she still has feelings for him but does everything to put him off when she realises his number is only 24 days. She has tried before to save people with a low number but has never succeeded as they just died a different way instead, Iike her beloved mentor Joan.
There are flashbacks to the time of the accident ten years ago, and both Adam and Sophie get a POV. This works well to get to know both of them. I don't know much about maths and Möbius strips but I loved the side characters - Adam's daughter Wren, Joan, Sophie's boss Bernard and old Walter who'd rather know what fate has in store for him.
While I had nothing against Sophie's weird magical realism condition, I thought it was solved a little too quickly and illogically at the end, like the author didn't know how to actually deal with Adam's probable death. Also that stalker thing was a bit weird and overblown.
It was lovely how Sophie and Adam found together again and became a little family unit with Wren, plus Adam and Wren getting a closer father-daughter bond too. I liked this a lot more than the author's previous book "Meet Me on the Bridge". The book reads well and is a nice slow-burn second chances romance, if you don't mind magical realism and maths talk.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cancer, Death, Terminal illness, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Car accident, Injury/Injury detail