Julie's Review: Time of My Life

Summary: In her latest novel, Scotch tackles an oft-asked question—what if I had held on to the one that got away?—with an engaging, fast-moving, high-concept drama. Endearing Jillian Westfield seems to have it all: a loving lawyer husband, a healthy infant daughter, and a lovely home in Westchester County, N.Y. But cleaning spit-up and dealing with her husband's long office hours have begun to wear on Jill, and it hardly helps that she's just learned that her post-college boyfriend, Jackson, is getting married. The day after a deep, chi-clearing massage, Jill wakes up and finds herself seven years in the past, giving her the chance to revisit her life with Jack in Manhattan, when she worked as an advertising executive. Hindsight, of course, is anything but 20/20, and Jill's new choices hold unforeseen consequences for herself and those she loves. As Jill, through trial and error, rethinks her biggest decisions—such as her choice not to reconcile with her estranged mother—Scotch keeps one dexterous step ahead of page-flipping readers eager to guess the outcome.~amazon.com

Review: I don't think men ponder on the past as much as women do, so I was very interested in the story of Jillian and how she ends up in her "What if". You see Jillian is a stay at home mom to an adorable toddler named Katie, but her marriage to Henry seems stale and predictable. It doesn't help that Henry travels all the time and Jill is in fact very lonely. So when she hears that her ex-boyfriend Jackson is getting married, gets a chi cleansing massage she ends up in her past trying to see if this was a path she was supposed to take.

As Jill works her way through her old life with Jackson trying to repair what went wrong, she finds that maybe no matter what you do, maybe the past and the future are inevitable. Once you go back and undo things, you always change the future for good or bad. In Jill's case, the changes were for the good.

I really liked Jill. I could identify with Jill. I felt for Jill and her struggles. I've had many of the same feelings that Jill was going through. My "what if" wouldn't be an ex boyfriend or even replacing my husband, it would be more if I chose to follow a different path professionally. Where would I be? Would I be successful?

One of my favorite quotes in the book is the following:

In real life, most marriages don't come undone with one big explosion. Unlike in the movies, most wives don't stumble upon lipstick on a collar or discover a hotel receipt in a blazer pocket. Most wives don't uncover hidden gambling problems or latent addictions or experience out-of-nowhere abuse that pops up one day and destroys everything. Some do, but most, no, not most. Most marriages unravel slowly, slipping drop by drop, like water ebbing through a curled palm, until one day, you look down and notice that it, you hand, is entirely empty. That's how most marriages dissolve and run dry. ~page 166

I also liked that Jill realized that it wasn't all her husband's fault either, that she was at fault for some of the unraveling. How, in marriage and friendships, it's usually both parties that are at fault in some ways and it's all who are involved that can make it sink or swim.

If you've ever asked yourself "What If", the I highly recommend Time of My Life, it might put all your questions about your past to bed.

Final Take: 4/5