Review by Booklist Review
For literary agent Emma, life is an endless to-do list. Get the kids fed and to school--check; attend this committee meeting (even though your kids have aged out of the program)--check; attend this very important meeting with your hot mess of a boss and the misogynistic author your agency represents--check. But running from checkbox to checkbox means Emma has lost sight of what's truly important, like her family. When Emma forgets her anniversary (again), her husband Dan leaves the house upset and is involved in a fatal accident. Emma is completely devastated, but when she wakes up the next morning, Dan is in the bed next to her--alive. In the style of the film Groundhog Day, Emma must relive the day Dan died until she finds a way to fully live. Told in both the present day and through flashback letters, Major's latest is a moving contemporary tale that will remind readers that a checklist can never fulfill you like the memories made with those you love.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Major (The Silent Hours) draws on Groundhog Day for a poignant tale of love, regret, and second chances involving a London couple. High-powered literary agent Emma, married with two children to hopeless romantic Dan, has forgotten to write him a letter on Monday, December 3--the day the two met on a London tube. Dan has come to expect these letters each year, and after a tiff, he goes out to walk the dog--and gets hit by a car and dies. Or does he? Emma wakes up the next morning and suddenly it's Monday, December 3, all over again, and she has a second chance to show Dan how much she loves him. For months, Emma and Dan are caught in a time loop of endless Mondays, and despite Emma's most fervent efforts--ignoring the constant pings from WhatsApp is a significant sacrifice--Dan dies every time, whether by car, heart attack, or other circumstance. Things culminate in a surprising coincidence, and Major caps it all off with an ambiguous ending. Well-drawn supporting characters add depth, in particular Emma's sister-in-law, Hattie, with whom the couple is especially close, and whom Emma forces herself to make more time for as well. Women's fiction fans will love this tearjerker. Agent: Kristyn Keene Benton, CAA. (Mar.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A harried London woman lives the same day over and over again, with her husband always dying at 10:17 p.m. Time fragments and collides in this story encompassing the first meeting, marriage, child-rearing, lockdown, and post-lockdown lives of Emma and Dan, a married couple in their early 40s. The first time Dan dies, Emma is a harried literary agent so focused on her work, volunteering, and support of everyone outside her family that she has forgotten the anniversary of her first meeting with Dan and missed the clues that something is very amiss with both of their children and their dog. Dan is crushed that she's forgotten the anniversary--she's the one who suggested they celebrate every year with heartfelt letters to one another. He's written to her every year since--including the year he moved out because of his grief over losing his mother and his inability to be the parent to his newborn daughter that he should have been. Author Major has told Dan's story of his and Emma's lives together, and his love and frustrations with his partner's complexities, through these annual letters. Emma's story of growth and change is told through her first-person account of living that single day over and over again. Dan always dies, but Emma's experience of her relationship with him and her family changes as she relives every day. Fans of the 1998 movie Sliding Doors will enjoy this book. Experiences of anguish, depression, grief, and anger as well as those of patience, love, acceptance, and peace are all addressed. A story of mindfulness and joy in the small routines of love and family. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
