The Time of My Life

by Cecelia Ahern

[Leah]

I love Cecelia Ahern. She’s one of my favourite authors because none of her books are the same as any other. She manages to somehow come up with plots no other author would ever attempt and her originality knows no bounds. PS, I Love You is one of my favourite books ever and I’ve enjoyed all of her other books, particularly The Book of Tomorrow, so when a new book was finally announced, I was thrilled. The Time of my Life is Cecelia’s eighth novel and it’s just as unique and just as original as all of her other books. In fact, if it didn’t have Cecelia’s name on it I wouldn’t have known it was her as it’s a very different novel to The Book of Tomorrow. (Yes, I know I said Cecelia is very unique, but this one seems much more different.)

The Time of my Life is an interesting novel. I found it hard to really “feel” the novel as Lucy is one of those heroines you love to hate and when you write a book you want your heroine to make her mark and although Lucy did make her mark, it wasn’t necessarily a good one and I found it hard to really root for her. I get that she’s like that – after all, if she was lovely and warm and witty and inviting, then she wouldn’t NEED to meet her Life. She wouldn’t need Life’s help to make her life better than it is. So although I did get that Lucy needed to be a bit unlikeable, it still didn’t really help. I want a heroine I can root for and although I tried my hardest to root for Lucy, at times she just seemed beyond help and I wanted to slap her; to tell her to grow up.

The plot, however, is fantastic. I love the idea that if your life isn’t as good as it should be then you’ll get an appointment with your Life. I mean, that’s so awesome and inventive and, well, I loved Cosmo. (Cosmo is Lucy’s Life, that’s what she/he decided on for a name.) I liked that Cosmo didn’t just let Lucy get away with the lies she told and that he called her up on the way she lived her life. I liked how he was there for her and wanted to help her and to make her be more than she could be. The plot very much kept me reading, and I also liked the addition of Lucy’s wrong number man whom she ends up talking to after dialling a wrong number. Both Cosmo (I love that name) and Don (the wrong number man) help with Lucy’s edginess and the excellent plot kept me reading. If the novel had been solely about Lucy, I’d have given up long ago, but the plot and the secondary characters kept the novel going very well.

As you might already have realised, Lucy wasn’t my favourite ever character. Her family didn’t help; the Silchester’s were quite horrible people, with the exception of her mother and brothers, and they’d definitely helped to shape her into the edgy, somewhat bitter person she became. I could understand her hesitance to change her life and trust Cosmo, but on the other hand, I just wanted her to embrace everything for once instead of trying to fight it. She does redeem herself somewhat and she isn’t always awful, but it’s hard to get over the first impressions I had of her; I want to be taken in by a character from page one, not feel as if I’m somehow imposing on her life. The secondary characters were brilliant and I really liked Cosmo and Don and Lucy’s friends.

The Time of my Life is definitely a bit different to Cecelia’s other novels. It was enjoyable enough and in the end, I warmed to Lucy. However first impressions of her are hard to bypass and I feel a lot of people will take an instant dislike to her. But she’s worth persevering with. I mean it’s Cecelia Ahern. She’s always worth reading and although it wasn’t quite on par with The Book of Tomorrow (which was ridiculously, insanely good) I still liked it. It was far from perfect and despite enjoying the plot, it was indeed a sharper read than I expected. I’d definitely recommend the book – of course I would, Cecelia Ahern could write a computer manual and I’d still recommend it – and it’s definitely a book I’d read again. It’s definitely a book I’m going to try and get a finished copy of (I know, I’m a sucker for a beautiful book). Cecelia’s writing is as on top as ever, and I can’t wait for what she comes up with next and I’m fairly sure this will be as big a bestseller as her other novels.