What if?
I just read Time of My Life by Allison Winn Scotch. No, more accurately I just sat in one spot for about 5 hours and devoured it. I’d taken two days to read 50 pages (life gets in the way sometimes, you know) and then in one fall swoop I hit the mute button on the dogs, kids and TV and finished the other 220-odd pages.
Dee-licious!
In Scotch’s second novel (her first being The Department of Lost & Found) reluctantly suburban but picture-perfect new mom Jillian finds herself younger and wiser and back in her life BH and BB — Before Husband and Before Baby. Jillian gets to live with that 20/20 hindsight we all think would lead us down a different path. She gets to right wrongs and seize missed opportunities. But she also gets to see the forest for the trees. There are no rose colored glasses when you’ve been there done that.
OK, I’m done with the cliches, promise.
And since timing is everything, I think that this is the right time for TOML. It’s a book about living in the moment, of seeing the good and not the bad and of realizing that above all, there are always choices. (cash or credit, hmm?)
Know what else I like about this book? The writing is smart. I do think a lot while I read, and I did predict some of what happened to Jillian, but the journey to get there was completely engaging. I got lost in the story and for someone who usually picks apart words and dialog and structure — that’s saying a lot. I smiled as I read, and there was even a place that I balled my eyes out…but I won’t tell you…I’ll let you tell me when you read it yourself.
Time of My Life hits bookstore shelves on October 7th.
How did I read it early? I won a copy and it’s signed by the author (I love that, don’t you?) — lucky me!
(P.S. If you leave near enough to me to be handed my copy and to hand it back when you’re finished, you can borrow it. Yes, I mean you.)
Does that mean me or one of the other goofs who live in our town?
Are ya anywhere near Baton Rouge? LOL
This is the kind of writer I want to grow into. The kind that writes a book that people sit for 5 or 8 hours for. The kind people give up food and bathroom trips for, or pee, etc. while reading.
Everything else is immaterial to me. That’s the goal.
I remember when I read Harry Potter, I couldn’t even pee without taking the book with me. That wasn’t hype and fame that cause dthat. Plenty of famous writers I can put their books down to pee.
I must confess, Stephen King has become my guilty pleasure. Lisey’s Story captivated me from page one. Alice Sebold and Anne Marie MacDonald hold their reader’s hearts in the palms of their hands. Sounds as if Allison Winn Scotch is a read waiting to happen in my house.