Maybe in Another Life

Photo taken by me

 

I was gifted Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid for my birthday last month. It had been on my list for a while because I loved TJR's Daisy and the Six (not the TV series however) and also Malibu Rising. Both books received a 5-star rating from me. I also enjoyed Evidence of the Affair, but I gave that novella only 3 stars. Three stars isn't a bad rating at all ~ it means you liked the book in general, but it had flaws. Four stars means you loved it, and 5 stars means it was utterly mind-blowing and you'd read it again. Most of my ratings are between 2 and 4 stars. (Two means it was "just OK.") If a book is so bad I'm going to award only one star, I usually don't even finish it. 

As I've ranted mentioned before, I feel the star rating system is skewed because so many readers are giving books 5 stars if they merely liked them. I'm not a purist ~ it's fine to overrate your friends' books ~ but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about people flinging 5 stars at ordinary mass-produced romances, thrillers, etc., and thus making the ratings meaningless. So annoying. Oh well, I guess there are larger problems in the world…

Anyway. Back to Maybe in Another Life. 

Warning: my review contains spoilers!

I didn’t like the main character, which isn’t necessarily an insurmountable impediment to loving a book if the plot and other story elements are great, but they aren’t. We are following two distinct storylines, which diverge after 29 year old Hannah does or does not hook up with her old high school boyfriend when she moves back to LA after flitting around various cities/ jobs. In the first scenario, Hannah and Ethan have a blissful few weeks together until Hannah realizes she’s preggo, but not with Ethan’s baby ~ she’d been carelessly hooking up with a married man in NYC. There’s not one moment where Hannah thinks hmm I am such a flighty and irresponsible person, so perhaps I should terminate this pregnancy or at least consider giving the baby up for adoption. Instead, she’s all in immediately, even after the NY man nopes out of helping. Did I mention that Hannah has no job, no car, and no apartment? That’s OK: other people step in to help her because she’s so wonderful. Those wonderful Hannah moments occurred off-screen, as far as I can tell. 

In the second scenario, Hannah chooses not to go home with Ethan and gets hit by a car. She wakes up in the hospital after three days in a coma, only to discover that she’s lost a pregnancy she hadn’t known about. Ethan shows up to visit, but he had taken another girl home from the bar that night after Hannah turned him down, and Hannah knows this, so she is meh about him. She falls for her hunky night nurse Henry instead, and gets him in trouble with his supervisor. I feel bad for all of Hannah’s physical problems, but she’s so selfish! The plot isn’t captivating enough to make up for her shortcomings. And do we have to keep hearing about her love for cinnamon buns on every freaking page?! Not to mention her obsession with having her hair up in a “high bun.” Buns buns buns! (Same thing in the other storyline.) Hannah quickly recovers from the accident, with everyone helping her just like in the alternate universe. Blah blah.

The reason I awarded 3 stars to this book instead of 2 is due to all the philosophical musings in the narrative and sometimes in the dialog. That’s what kept my interest. It was also interesting that TJR didn’t write the exact same endings to both situations. Some events stayed on track in both, and others were wildly different. I liked this, since I don’t believe in “fate” other than what you create for yourself through the choices you make… and some stuff is totally out of your control. 

I didn’t love or hate this book because not everything has to be extreme, and I would give another TJR novel a shot.

~*~

This review is for John Holton’s Writer’s Workshop.