Title: Come Again
Author: Robert Webb
Publisher: Canongate
[Synopsis]
Kate’s husband Luke – the man she loved from the moment she met him twenty-eight years ago – died suddenly. Since then she has pushed away her friends, lost her job and everything is starting to fall apart.
One day, she wakes up in the wrong room and in the wrong body. She is eighteen again but remembers everything. This is her college room in 1992. This is the first day of Freshers’ Week. And this was the day she first met Luke.
But he is not the man that she lost: he’s still a boy – the annoying nineteen-year-old English student she first met. Kate knows how he died and that he’s already ill. If they can fall in love again she might just be able to save him. She’s going to try to do everything exactly the same…
[My Review]
Come Again is a fun, and humorous novel with a variety of themes, perhaps the most overarching one being grief/ loss. This sounds like it should be depressing, and there are defintely some parts which made me feel really emotional and a little sad, but it’s also uplifting and fun in other moments too.
Kate is a brilliant character and I instantly warmed to her, despite her having a very negative outlook on life at the start. But who can blame her – her husband of 28 years, Luke, has suddenly died and left her feeling bereft. Things suddenly kick up a gear, and we experience the story going forward in three parts.
We see Kate’s situation as it is now, as she is struggling with grief, and then in the second part we are transported back to the moment when Kate first met Luke, at university in the early 90s. She suddenly realises she might have the chance to change things – but how, without sounding absolutely mad? In the third part we are brought back to the present day, and see how the future may have been affected by her foray into the past.
Each section offers a slightly different feel, but all are really entertaining. I loved reading about Kate’s ‘second’ first meeting with Luke, and her time at uni, and though I found some of the last section a little confusing at times, I finished Come Again with a sad-but-also-happy smile on my face. I wanted things to be different on one hand, but on the other was glad it ended as it did.
Come Again is sweet, witty and poignant, and funny too – a great mix. It’s not necessarily a book to completely ‘escape’ into, as there’s a lot of serious themes in there, and parts where I felt myself feeling a bit teary, but it is still an easy and enjoyable read nevertheless. Kate is a character I would have happily read more of.
[Rating: 4/5]
Many thanks to the publisher, Canongate, for providing a copy of this book on which I chose to write an honest and unbiased review.