Welcome to Litsy!

This exploration of grief & friendship is a soft pick for me. Meg (stage name Lana) is famous but realizing how unfulfilled she is. Deciding to take a trip to the Irish town where she had been accepted to college years before, she wakes up in a world where she DID go to school there & never left. She has friends & a full life (including the world's best BF) & her childhood bestie- who died at 19 in her real life- lives there!

My son passed on a lovely (not!!!) cold. Listening to the tagged #audiobook and drinking tea is all I can do at the moment. 😬 I'm grumpy about it, because I would rather get my to-do list done.

This book began as a fun Hallmarkish (must be a word, right🤣) story as the hand of one bff displays 2 lifelines while the hand of the other bares a single extinguishing line. The story soon became something more complex than what Hallmark resolves in the last 4-minutes of their HEAs - and not only that, Meg/Lana left LA for location in Ireland 🇮🇪

Wow, what a gut punch that last 1/3 of this book is! I would have loved to spend twice as long with these characters, but alas, the story wrapped up.

I love a sliding doors/path not taken story and this one was great. A famous actress wakes up in an a Irish village experiencing a life she might have had. The audiobook is read by the author (who has a theatre background) and she did great. It was fun and also sweet and poignant. I will definitely read what she writes next.

Meg has made it as an actress, but has had to change herself and is kinda exhausted by the Hollywood scene. So she takes a trip to a town in Ireland where she had wanted to go to school. Somehow, she discovers herself in the life she would have lived had she done so. I really enjoyed this one and thought the author did a good job pulling it all together. Plus there‘s some good humor sprinkled through.

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My current reads feel like an interesting mix, but it‘s weird not to have a thriller going too!

This would be a fun one to talk about so I can see why it‘s a #BOTM add-on! It opens on TV actress Lana Lord‘s 30th & though she has everything she ever dreamed of back when she was Florida‘s Meg Bryan, she starts to think about the what-if her life—& her best friend Aimee‘s— might look like had she gone to the Irish liberal arts college she dreamed of. She impulsively gets on a flight…when she arrives, the town already knows her as Meg, not Lana!

I found this adult debut emotional, but ultimately satisfying. Read my full review here: https://debbybrauer.org/#the-other-side-of-now

Publication is expected June 3.

#NetGalley #StMartinsPress #MacmillanAudio #TheOtherSideofNow 📚💙