If I Could Turn Back Time

by Beth Harbison

After a diving accident, thirty-seven-year-old Ramie Phillips is waking up, trying to understand a voice in the distance: "Wake up!" It's her mother. "You're going to be late for school again. I'm not writing a note this time." Transported back in time to the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Ramie's experience is the the fantasy of every woman who's ever thought, "If I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, I'd do things so differently."

On a boat with friends off the Florida coast, Ramie Phillips tries to fight her feelings of discontent with steel will and hard liquor. No one even notices as she gets up and goes to the diving board and dives off... and wakes up almost twenty years in the past, at home in bed with her mother waking her up for school. With a second chance to see the people she's lost and change the choices she regrets, Ramie will have to answer the question that no one else can: What it is that she really wants from the past, and for her future?

• ISBN10: 1466842199
• ISBN13: 9781466842199
• Publish Date: 28 July 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: St. Martin's Press
• Format: eBook
• Language: English

Reviews

[Rowena]

Ever wonder what it would be like to wake up the day before you turn 18 again?
While out on her yacht with friends, Ramie is partying it up when she cartwheels right off the yacht and wakes up the day before her eighteenth birthday. When she fell into the water? She was 38 so waking up right before you turn 18 again is definitely a trippy experience for Ramie. Getting to do things differently, right some wrongs and all that made for an interesting story.

Ramie was an interesting character, one that I didn’t think I would connect all that much with but in little ways, I did. This book made me think to when I was 18, the choices that I made back then. Would I change things or not? It made me remember the kind of person I was back then. How different things were back then and how the choices I made then, molded me into the person that I am right now. Would I risk losing everything I have now to maybe change my life for the better?

Even after reading through Ramie’s journey, I’m not sure if I would or not.
This was an enjoyable book and I probably would have enjoyed the book more if the middle didn’t drag and if the lessons being taught in this book didn’t come off as so freaking preachy. There were times when I would put this book down because I didn’t want to roll my eyes down the street. I felt that I was being preached to and I’m not a fan of that in the books that I read for fun. I thought this book would be a lot lighter than it actually was and even though I enjoyed the beginning and the end, the middle was hard to get through at times. I wanted to speed things up a lot.

It was a solid story but not quite what I was expecting and wanted. I will definitely be reading more books from Harbison though because the beginning to this book was strong and the ending did a great job of wrapping things up so I’m game for more.

Grade: 3 out of 5