The One Before the One - Emma Cooper - ★★

 

AUTHOR: Emma Cooper

GENRE: Romance

PUBLICATION DATE: January 31, 2025

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: A romantic mystery with timeslip elements. Fabulous potential, but the execution didn’t work well for me. However, to readers who enjoy emotional dramas, this book might work better. Mine is an outlier opinion. 

Plot Preview:

Seven years ago, the love of Liv’s life, her boyfriend Kit, disappeared while on a hike. It took her many years to get over her grief. Now thirty-two, Liv has moved on, found love with James, and is ready to take the next step of their relationship. However, on the day of their wedding, when Liv opens the door of her hotel room, she finds herself in the old flat she shared with Kit. Worse, she has somehow travelled back in time, to six days before Kit’s mysterious disappearance. Has Liv been given an opportunity to find out what happened to Kit? Perhaps to save his life? But if she does end up successful, how will it affect her future? Should she go back to the one – James, or the one before the one, Kit?

The story comes to us in a dual first-person perspective. 

I am not much into romances these days. However, the time travel element of this book made me curious. Unfortunately, the trope didn’t work well for me. This is a tough book to review without going into spoilers, so I will keep things mostly vague. 

Bookish Yays: 

😍 Rarely does a book cause me to go “Wait, What?!” with a twist. This book managed it.

😍 The title – quite clever. 

😍 The descriptions of the location – beautiful. 

😍 Mac. Great character. Would have loved to see more of him.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

😐 James is Kit’s brother. (Not a spoiler as this is revealed in the very first chapter.) I usually avoid such triangles because it can get predictably awkward. The book handles it fairly well at the start, but later reactions seem unrealistic.

😐 Romance fans might be disappointed at how little romance there is in this book. It has much more emotional drama than romance. But I didn’t pick this up for the romance anyway, so not a major problem for me. 

😐 Too many secrets and miscommunication. Works in some cases, annoys the rest of the time.

Bookish Nays:

😒 The time travel content: Not Groundhog Day, but Timeslip. Cause: unexplained. Purpose: Unexplained. Impact on the future: None. So I didn’t see the point of this timeslip at all. 

😒 Liv’s first-person POV gets very repetitive. Loads of inner rambling on the same topics over and over. I was especially fed up of her repeated comments on her weight and body size. She's also inconsistent as a narrator, constantly contradicting her earlier words and actions. Plus, she breaks the fourth wall in the initial chapters and speaks to the readers directly, which didn’t make sense for the plot at all. 

😒 This sentence: "I would drink his blood if I could…" –  What the heck!? In what world is it okay to say such a thing to express the extent of your love for someone? (And no, no one was a vampire or a vampire fan in this book.)

😒 The two love interests. While I did like one much better than the other, both took such stupid decisions that it was tough to root for either. 

😒 The love triangle. One half of the book is heavily tilted towards one character and then it switches to the other side. The balance is missing.

😒 The remaining secondary characters except for Mac – bare minimum detailing, though a couple of them had great potential.

😒 The use of the past timeline relies a lot on Liv’s crystal-clear memory of every day in that week from seven years ago. Who can have such incredible recollection skills that even include knowledge of what was eaten all those years ago on that specific day? 

😒 The reason for Kit’s disappearance. It fell quite flat after all the build-up. Utterly dissatisfying! 

😒 Everyone is a bit too forgiving after the above reveal, which is unrealistic. There should have been a lot more anger along with the relief.

😒 Many loopholes in logic, especially connected to Kit’s disappearance. One thing I simply didn’t understand was why Liv didn’t use social media to look for the people who could provide her with some answers. The past was in 2016, not the pre-Internet/SM age! It takes hardly a second to click on “View Profile” from FB Messenger once you see a message.

😒 The ending went the only way it could have, no surprises there. Plus, it had too much of an infodump.

😒 The epilogue was too perfect for such a plot.

All in all, I expected a greater emotional impact from this book, but as I couldn’t connect with any of the characters nor empathise with their quandary, I was disappointed. To me, the blurb is much stronger than the execution. 

That said, the other reviews and ratings clearly prove that I am an outlier in my opinion. I’m often a Grinch when it comes to melodramatic plots as well as mysteries, so it would be better if you read other opinions and take a more educated call on this novel. 

Recommended to those who enjoy emotional women’s fiction with a strong element of mystery. Not to be picked up if you want a time-travel or groundhog day story that ends with a learning experience for the characters.

My thanks to Rachel's Random Resources, Boldwood Books, and author Emma Cooper for a complimentary copy of 'The One Before the One' via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn't work out better.

The digital version of this book is currently available free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

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Blurb:

Liv is given the chance to live one life-changing week over, but can she change her future...? And does she want to? A gorgeous, uplifting novel, perfect for fans of Shari Low, Paige Toon and Beth Moran.

When Liv’s boyfriend Kit disappeared on a hike, seven years earlier, she thought her life was over. But with the help of their family and friends, she’s pushed her way through the grief, and now, miraculously, she's found a way to love again.

Until the morning of her wedding, when Liv steps through a doorway, and finds herself, somehow, back at the flat she shared with seven years earlier, six days before he left. Now, Liv has a chance to live those six days over, and change everything. If she gets this right, she can find out why Kit leaves and stop him.

But can she save him? And if she does, how will she choose, between the man she loved then, and the one she loves now?