Time of My Life by Allison Winn Scotch

Time of My Life
by Allison Winn Scotch
Pub. Date: October 2008
Genre: Fiction
304pp

Synopsis from BN.com:
Jillian Westfield has a life straight out of the women’s magazines she obsessively reads. She’s got the modern-print rugs of Metropolitan Home, the elegant meals from Gourmet, and the clutter-free closets out of Real Simple. With her investment-banker husband behind the wheel and her cherubic eighteen-month-old in the backseat, hers could be the family in the magazines’ Range Rover ads. Yet somehow all of the how-to magazine stories in the world can’t seem to fix her faltering marriage or stop her from asking "What if?" Then one morning Jillian wakes up seven years in the past. She’s back in her Manhattan apartment. She’s back in her fast-paced job. And she’s still with Jackson, the ex-boyfriend, and star of her what-if fantasies. Armed with twenty-twenty hindsight, she’s free to choose all over again. She can reconnect to the mother who abandoned her, she can use ad campaigns from her future to wow her clients, and she can fix the fights that doomed her relationship with Jackson. Or can she?

Why I Picked It:
I'm always intrigued by regrets, second chances, and unfettered triumph. That's what I was hoping for when I found this book on the Costco tables.

My Review:
Jillian is suffering from a serious case of the Mommy blues. She feels her marriage to Henry is stagnant, she adores her daughter Katie but motherhood is sucking the life out of her, as is the dichotomy between the absolute beauty of nurturing/raising children and the isolation and loneliness of being a stay-at-home mother. She begins to think she made some serious mistakes, and romanticizes all that she once had. The last relationship with Jackson that ended abruptly, a career left behind... Miraculously, in the throes of an intense massage to "unblock her chi", Jillian finds herself 7 years in the past, back in that relationship with Jack, a chance to do it all differently.

So, with a do-over and the knowledge of the "future" intact, Jillian resolves to undo what would bring her to a stifling halt, i.e. not meet and marry Henry, and instead, make peace with the troubles of her relationship with Jack. Fate and the grounding forces of reality have a funny way of keeping you where you are supposed to be. Henry keeps appearing in her do-over, showing up places where he hadn't been before - well, where she hadn't even been before the first time around, and those brushed over problems with Jack are more than just small stuff.

I really enjoyed this book. The author craftily intertwined the story of Jillian's do-over with Jackson with flash forwards to how life had been with Henry, throwing in a story about Katie, how Jillian dealt with her abandonment by her mother. Ultimately, I think it would be somewhat useful for all of us to be able to take a time machine back to that one decision, broken relationship, or whatever it is in our past to push the "what if?" button and let it play out. Maybe we would have been better off, or maybe life would reshuffle itself and still turn out the same, but with less questions once we've been given a new perspective on who or what is really to blame for where we ended up. Who knows?

I always enjoy a fresh take on this idea, and while I feared it would resolve itself in a ridiculous manner, I was pleasantly surprised. One complaint: the epilogue type chapter at the end felt slapped on. I was a little irritated, but not enough to change my overall appreciation for the book.

Now that I've reread this post to ensure I didn't give it all away, I will post. 3 for 3 this year! It's going to be a good year for reading!!

2010 Challenge: 3 Read, 47 to go!