Blurb:
On the way home from school in 1986, Craig Pelling decided to buy a can of Coke. He wasn't to know a seemingly innocuous visit to the local newsagent would dramatically change the course of his life. Consequently, Craig now lives in a loveless marriage and earns a living in a dead-end job as the manager of an electrical store. He could have been so much more. He could have achieved so much more.
But fate hasn't finished with Craig Pelling.
A school reunion proves to be the catalyst for chaos, and decades on from his visit to that newsagent, Craig's mundane life is turned upside down as his past comes back to haunt him. As he plummets towards rock-bottom, all seems lost for Craig until he's thrown a lifeline — the miraculous lifeline of a brief trip back in time to 1986. Will he be able to fix his life? Is it as simple as just reverting one decision he made over thirty years ago?
Craig is about to find out.
Strengths:
Yeah, a time travel book. This book is about a middle aged man called Craig Pelling.To put it frankly, his life is in a mess. He is about to lose his job owning to an old enemy from school, his marriage is in pieces because of one mistake he made when he was 16.
What was a pleasure to read about this book was the character Craig. He clearly isn’t the brightest spark in the world shall we say but he’s charming and has that underdog with a great sense of barbed humour kind of feel that has you rooting for you right from the beginning even when things start to go really wrong for him and then by chance he has the chance to go back to that day where everything goes wrong and change it for the better.
And does he? Well, thats not for me to tell.
I will say however, it was also a book that was pretty quick to read. Normally with books, they tend to take me usually a few weeks to read, Billy Summers for example – I did this in about a week while on my honeymoon and I had my now wife saying to me several times what was making me chuckle somewhat which was that.
What did it help it was the backing cast with numerous cameos from certain people who I won’t name who I think each balanced out the main character, some of which really dragged him and others helped pull out – building up nicely a full formed character with him.
Weaknesses:
Two things really – the build up leading to him stepping back in time, it simply was a bit long I felt but I loved it when he got there and tried fixing everything even though that felt a bit rushed.
Secondly, the ending.. I should have checked before I got the book but it turns the too long set up was leading to a sequel which left things dangling massively in mid air badly.
I will get the second book in due course but it was very frustrating to put it nicely.
A shame as it could have being a 10 without that, its a 8 otherwise.
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