The Things I'd Miss

by Andrew Clover

This is for fans of Maggie O'Farrell and Jojo Moyes. If you could change your past, would you? And if you were about to lose it all, what, actually, would be the things you'd miss? The Things I'd Miss is a heart-rending novel about Lucy, a young mother who leaves her children alone for a few minutes as she pops out to run an errand. As she speeds off down the country lane, she collides with an oncoming van and loses control. The car flips over. Everything disappears. As she opens her eyes, she sees herself back at university, lying beside the man she's always loved - the one she never kissed. Can she do it now? And if she changes the past, what will she lose in the present? Original, funny and heartbreaking, The Things I'd Miss is a unique book about love, marriage and loss.

• ISBN10: 1444830295
• ISBN13: 9781444830293
• Publish Date: 1 November 2016 (first published 17 July 2014)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 19 October 2022
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: F A Thorpe (Publishers)
• Imprint: Ulverscroft Ltd
• Edition: Large type / large print edition
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 330
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

When I was offered the opportunity to take part in Andrew Clover's blog tour for his second novel, I said yes! It seemed like a vastly different novel to his debut, which I couldn't for the life of me get in to, so I was quite interested to see how he handled a novel that would see his main character have a car crash and wake up back in her university days. I love novels like that - they're super interesting, they allow for changes to be made, and the potential for life in the future to be altered, and I was ever so curious about the comparisons to JoJo Moyes, whom I adore. It was an interesting novel, but not one I would rave about, I must admit.

What I liked about The Things I'd Miss was the fact that, at the beginning, we're introduced to Lucy, and her husband and her kids, and we can see that her life isn't perhaps how she had planned it to be - 5am wake-up calls (that would end in MURDER in my house, fyi), fights about anything and everything, and kids who barely give you the peace and quiet Lucy so craves. Then, when the accident occurs, the novel hops around, from place to place - Lucy in Uni, Lucy as a kid, back and forth we go, with no linear storytelling, until a mystical being appears, and Lucy ends up back as a kid, and works her way back to her Uni days, and back to Hugh, whom she professes to love. If I'm honest, I preferred the hopping back and forth, to times in Lucy's life that seemed to define her as a person, I liked the zig-zag pulled from one place to another feel, because once the story settled into its Hugh/Lucy love-fest, I didn't find it as compelling.

Lucy's Uni days are certainly interesting, and I loved getting to know Hugh, Simon, Lucy herself, and her best friend Gemma, but what I couldn't understand was why, if Lucy liked Hugh as much as she says she does, why she didn't say anything! Wouldn't you just have told him, all those years ago? It's clear there's mutual feelings between the two of them, but for some reason or another, neither of them confessed to it, until Lucy ended up revisiting her memories after her crash. If you're going to write a novel about a great, Romeo-and-Juliet-type romance, there needs to be solid ground, and while I felt their connection, it seemed entirely pointless considering the fact they'd both stayed completely silent, and they were just friends for as long as they knew each other. I wanted more honesty! But, of course, if there had been honesty, and they had confessed their feelings, there would have, perhaps, been no book.

Overall, it was an interesting read. I wouldn't go so far as to compare it to a JoJo Moyes read, especially as, at times, I found the narrative quite jarring - too many exclamation marks and italicised writing, Lucy's mum talks to 5-year-old Lucy in the most awful, excruciating way, and 5-year-old Lucy talks and thinks like, well, not a 5-year-old. I also STRONGLY oppose the fact Clover made Kipper the dog go in the car with Lucy, when she crashed. That's just plain mean. But the pace wasn't too bad, and the novel skipped along quite well, it wasn't the perfect read, but it was enjoyable and I actually liked seeing Simon's progression the most - he's rather left out, when it comes to Hugh and Lucy, and yet he's always there, always present, and he's a sneaky bugger, which I liked. The Things I'd Miss is definitely a thinker, and there was a lot I liked about the novel and I do love a good going-back-in-time novel!



 

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This review was originally posted on Girls Love To Read