Not My Usual Fare

Welcome to Books and Cooks, a blog about books, reading, and cooking along with whatever happens to be plaguing its author Tara at the moment. Geez, there is a lot of whining going on around here lately, and by the way when did Wednesday become the Day of Doom? Today I have a broken shoe (long story, but a pair of Clarks that I wear in the house every day every hour that I NEED) that I can hopefully replace at a minimum charge to me, a frozen cold water pipe to the upstairs bathroom where I am trying to raise the heat but it.is.not.responding.(the heat).and.i.am.getting.very.annoyed., and a driver's side door that won't open won't unlock manually or otherwise and is necessitating my Fourth trip to a car fixing place this winter when I have not needed a car fixing place more than say 3 or 4 times in the past 8 years. So if you sense a sarcastic tone coming from me today, now you know why.

Ahem.


Yes, I see you are looking at the photo of that book, Time of My Life by Allison Winn Scotch and I hear what you're thinking - 'that doesn't look like something Tara generally reads' and yes, you are right about that. I read this book to discuss with my book club at our March meeting. I even remember voting for this book, it seemed like the best of three so-so choices at the time.

Time of My Life is the story of Jillian, one of those New York-to-New Jersey transplanted housewives who has a big house, drives a Range Rover, has a beautiful child and a husband Henry who works all the time. Jillian discovers that her old boyfriend Jackson, the guy she dated right before she met her husband is engaged, and suddenly Jillian finds herself transported back to the past to the time when she is living with Jackson and they are happy. Jillian is thrilled to have a second chance with Jackson, and uses her knowledge of the future to finesse her way through her relationship and her job. But...was Jillian meant to be with Jackson or does she have to give up too much??

What I liked about this book was the writing. Winn Scotch is a very good writer, she has a way with words that made me keep reading even when I wasn't crazy about the subject (more on that later). I flew through this book in about a day and appreciated how modern the book felt. I'll be interested to see what else this author publishes, if she sticks to the married-lit sort of genre or moves on.

I was troubled by a few things about this book. First, the author never sold me on the time-travel thing. Now, I am a person who wants to buy into your story - The Time Traveler's Wife - I believed. I felt the shift in time here was too abrupt, and that the book could have been set up differently either with Parts (1,2,3) or a Prologue and Epilogue bookending the main story, but in any case I never bought it. In addition, I really disliked Jillian, the main character. She is so thrilled to be back in the past! Her husband and child were such burdens and now she is free, and yes the word burden is used. Now, if I were to find myself time traveling without my child, I'm guessing I would be pretty hysterical to get back to her or at least put myself on the path to creating her. Jillian is not so much going in that direction, in fact it takes months before she really begins to express that she misses her child. I was beginning to hope that Jillian would lose both Jackson and Henry since I frankly didn't find much about her that was very likable.

I am definitely in the minority when it comes to this book. The reviews on amazon are almost all positive, across the board. I might have been a fan of this book too, five or ten years ago, but now I just think, eh.