She Wouldn't Change a Thing - Sarah Adlakha

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Author: Sarah Adlakha

Genre: Time Travel, Suspense.
Rating: 3.75 stars.

If you got a chance to go back and redo some decisions in your life, would you change a thing? You might say no because whatever you went through made you who you are today. But you might even say yes because you want to erase some painful memories or regretful actions from your past. Whatever your answer, you know that this is not an easy decision to make as it has a lot of repercussions. But what if you are not given a choice? That’s the situation faced by the protagonist in this story.

Story:
39 year old psychiatrist Maria is living a busy life managing her home, career and two young children with a third on the way. One day, she has a strange encounter with a new patient named Sylvie, who possesses a lot of knowledge on Maria’s life and warns her to stay away from her assistant Rachel. Soon after, because of certain events I don’t want to reveal here, Maria finds herself back in time in her 17 year old self. How will she get back? Why has she been sent back? Can she reunite herself with her family? Can she change the past? Should she change the past? With a lot of confusion, questions, and choices facing Maria, you need to read the book to know what happens next.


The author’s style of plot structuring is quite different. As there is time travel involved, there are obviously two timelines. But even in between the chapters of the same timeline, there are minor time jumps in the story. So when the missing jumped part gets revealed casually in the subsequent chapter, you get a jolt of shock. The writing is quite lyrical and descriptive, which takes away a little from the pace of the story but is still a treat to read. What raises the bar is the author’s choice of ending. That’s how a plot ought to fulfil its logical destiny. Well done, indeed!

While the writing style is a treat, the pacing and character development left a little to be desired. The book started off really well and I was hooked onto it at first. But soon the content changed from action-oriented to musing-oriented, thereby dragging the pace of the story down. In addition, there are numerous characters and numerous interconnections across the characters. After a point, I gave up on figuring out their role in the character hierarchy and just went with the flow. Luckily, this doesn’t hinder the comprehension of the story. But because these characters don’t have a detailed background provided, you won’t be able to connect with most of them. Some of the characters felt superfluous to the plotline for this very reason. I would have loved to know more of Maria’s relationship with her husband Will. Whatever little was there in the story was sweet but left me wanting to know more.

<PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD:>
There are some plot ideas that stay unexplained till the end.
• Why was Sylvia sent back to Maria? What was her connection to Maria’s family? AFAIR, this wasn't revealed at all.
• Why were people being sent back to change things they had nothing to do with? As I said above, Sylvia had nothing to do with Rachel’s actions. Maria had nothing to do with Beth’s killing. It seemed strange that they were given a purpose of changing someone else’s life with whom they had no direct connection.
• How did George recognise Maria if he had met her only as a child? Why does Johnstone say that he has been a part of Maria’s whole life?
As is evident, all of these are missing bits of information related to the time travel part of the plot and all show how little we know of the character connections even after reading the whole book.


<END OF SPOILERS>


Understanding the exact nitty-gritties of the time travel in this book is a complex journey I initially attempted but later gave up on. As with every time travel book, there are procedural loopholes and so I just carried on tying to ignore them. If you decide to pick this up, keep aside your logic about theoretical time travel because the book deals more with the philosophical side of the topic.

For a debut work, the scope of the book is grand. And to a great extent, the author does justice to her idea. Her creativity is evident in the book, and I’m sure that she’ll be an author to look forward to in future.

This is an interesting book to read, no doubt. Pick it up when you are in the mood for something slow and contemplative. It’s more like sci-fi literary fiction than a sci-fi thriller. Keep your expectations in accordance with this.

Thank you, NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge Books, for the ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.

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