Oh happy day! It's time for another batch of books to read together! We have another round of voting completed and we have another batch of great books to read together. The book for April 2024 is Maybe Next Time by Cesca Major. Feel free to read our book club books in any order that you choose and when you've finished reading, come back here and tell us what you think. Please label spoilers. We have a new trick for hiding spoilers. Type whatever you want and then highlight the spoiler portion and click the + button above and select Spoiler. If that doesn't work (seems to be funky on Macs) just highlight your text and change the color to white >>>This is a super secret spoiler alert!<<< like I did right there. Spoiler I sometimes judge a book by it's cover Just a note, anyone is welcome to join in with our book club reading at any time and join in the discussion! The more the merrier! Happy reading!
I am so bad about finishing books and then forgetting to come back here to talk about them! I finished this one about a week ago I think. I listened to this one and thought it was pretty good. When I read the blurb I thought maybe I was going to get annoyed at the idea of her repeating the same day over and over again, but I think it was handled well. Spoiler SPOILERS: At first, I didn't love the ending exactly because it left me wondering if Dan died. After thinking about it though, I ended up thinking that he must have died. He died in every other scenario, but this time at least she told him and he left her a letter to help her not be alone with it afterward. It was an interesting concept because she basically had to go through the grieving process, while nobody else knew Dan had died and then she'd get to see him again the next day.
I loved this and thought i'd find the repetition annoying (i remember a park bench coffee 'scene' maybe before dealing with an author character i didn't like that i found an issue but it wasn't like that for the whole book to me but i also really liked the Groundhog Day movie so maybe i was destined to like this- i found the main character's trial and error attempts to change the days outcomes interesting to watch (like with the barista and the side story with her children) and got completely sucked in - i honestly can't remember the exact ending, i wish i'd written more than a line on goodreads) but i think i figured the same as @Karen Spoiler although i thought for sure there'd have to be an alternate ending where he lived and it was all happily ever after that maybe just coming to terms with it was the best she could hope for (because he would die in the bed on occassion from a heart issue regardless of the car, from memory but it was last year so not sure if i'm remembering exactly)
@bellbird Spoiler: Replies to Justine's Spoilers - with more spoilers So at the end after all the repeated days of him dying, she finally decides to tell him what she's been experiencing and that he's going to die that night. He writes her a letter acknowledging that and tells her how he feels about it or something like that and then the next chapter starts with the day after instead of repeating the same day again. I think it's assumed he dies, but it doesn't specifically say that. I also thought that something she did would change the fact that he still dies at the end, but I feel like that would have been a cop out too. And also, yeah, sometimes if she prevented him from going out with the dog on a walk so that he wouldn't get hit by a car, he still dies at home. Sometimes in bed, sometimes downstairs, etc. but no matter what he dies at the same time every night.
@Karen Spoiler: reply to your reply oh right yeah it was finally the next day but she hadn't rolled over yet to see if he was just asleep or passed away etc - i think that bugged me at the time that i had to assume or infer and i'm not always great at inferences, and the GroundHog movie has the happy ending etc which i think that made me think this book should have one too but i get the whole cop out if that had happened - i remember thinking it would have been more obvious if it was called 'maybe next time... but in the end actually no" - good reads seems divided on the ending or the lack of closure now i've read a few reviews and this one i think is how i kind of felt "Emma's was left in my eyes though on an annoying cliff hanger. Is Dan there or not? From Dan's letter I would go for the sad ending of he is not. Too many times everything ends so sickly perfectly in these reads. It makes it different and that is down to Dan." i do remember trying to analyse the ending myself after reading it and coming to the conclusion now that she (Emma) got more time with Dan than she ever would have due to the timeloop and that time would not have progressed to the next day should she not be ready to move on, which is really a lot more than most people get with sudden death situations - that's i think how i mentally came to terms with the ending but this was really a 'made for bookclub discussions' book!
I'm so bad about coming back here to comment too. I loved this one- and somehow I ended up reading like 3 or 4 in a row that had time travel type of plots- weird- but this one was my favorite of all of them! Spoiler: Spoiler I too think he dies at the end- sometimes I like that we the reader get to decide what we think happened, or like in this case- it's not just all wrapped up in a pretty bow at the end. I think the letter he wrote means he died & she was finally able to move on. What a blessing to be able to say those things to each other if you knew you had a final expiration date!
