I started to read this book but I had to give up because I didn't connect to the characters or the story. Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me review this book with my honest opinion.

A love story but not the usual boy finds girl, boy loses girl and then finds her again. This is a love story set in Sheffield, Adelaide and Edinburgh and covers 30 years. I was torn. I started off with No, No and then Yes, Yes and now I don’t know. Should they shouldn’t they. Usually I am on the lovers side, go for it but by being together how many innocent people will they hurt. You may ask yourself who are the good guys.

I really enjoyed this book. Alison and Daniel - from their childhood romance to how they meet again three decades later. The characters were very beleivable, and the way music plays a central role in the book is very enjoyable. There is love, laughter, and heartbreak and I would recommend this as a great read.

This was a very easy to read, sweet, whimsical and romantic book.
I enjoyed the journey of Dan and Alison BUT couldn't quite get over my disbelief that such a brief and young relationship was enough of a spur for either of them to overturn their lives and travel across the world to find each other.
I get the modern obsession with being able to seek out old loves thanks to social media and it's an enticing and exciting thought... but as I say I couldn't quite believe that something that happened 30 years ago - for such a short time and whilst so young was enough to make such an indelible mark on either of them.
And I did feel the other characters were being coerced into roles that make it easier for Dan and Alison to do what they wanted - their partners for example suddenly became 'bad people' meaning it was ok to leave them.
Also it was convenient their children were old enough to leave without anyone thinking badly of them as parents etc etc.
So as I say it was an enjoyable journey but I did feel I was being manipulated a bit too much and the outcome of this book far too fantastical to feel real.
It felt like some knowledge of music was needed but other than that easy to read and enjoy.

I loved everything about this story apart from the ending. The music had me reminiscing and remembering my own teenage years. I really like how music and song lyrics were used throughout the book. The dark topics in the book are sympathetically written about and made this book so much more than chick lit.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Brilliant! Loved this from start to finish, and totally reminded me of when I was a teenager making Mix Tapes!

Thank you very much for the chance to read this novel. I enjoyed both the story and the characters presented, it was a humorous, yet also sad in part, read and one that I would happily recommend to others.

I loved this. As a fellow music lover I really enjoyed the way Dan and Ali use the medium of songs to communicate with each other. I’d have loved a ‘set list’ for each chapter so that I could listen along - maybe a Spotify playlist? I also loved that their story isn’t predictable. Their happily ever after is hard fought and messy and painful at times, but completely realistic. Highly recommended.

I loved a good mix tape back in the day and the one that tells this story is a cracker!
Ali and Dan are very much together and then suddenly they are not .Dan has no idea what happened or where Ali has gone and he cant track her down as he never really knew where she lived, or anything much about her family.
The story is told from the perspectives of Dan and Ali both in the past and the current time and the truth is slowly revealed via Ali's chapters as to the whys and wherefores of her ending up in Australia in a less than perfect marriage.
Meanwhile Dan finds himself in a similar situation in the UK and a chance encounter via the author photo on a book bought for his wife leads Dan and Ali to reconnect.
This is pretty gritty for what is ultimately a love story, with lots of very powerful descriptions of the suffering Ali went through and the clever juxtaposition of Dans' charmed-in-comparison upbringing. The scene setting in Sheffield and Australia are really well written and put you in the thick of the action and able to clearly picture the steel works, the grimy streets and then the sunshine, kangaroos and the exotic birds.
The use of musical references throughout the story to first connect and the reconnect the characters is a brilliant one and it drove me to re-listen to some old favourites, discover some new and dig out some old mix tapes of my own!
A great read!

A nostalgic read, with memories of youth and a first love - with lots of musical memories.

The story is set in two timelines and does flick to and fro but is easy to follow.

Timeline 1, set in the late 70s when Alison and Dan are dating.

Timeline 2, life has moved on their both married with kids. A chance glance at Twitter and their reconnected through their love of music.

I loved dropping back to the past, I'm more of an eighties girl but I know lots of seventies tunes mentioned. The author described life back then so well, before mobiles ruled and we all caught buses, not ferried around by taxi of mum and dad!

The story doesn't run at 100 miles an hour, which is good as it's partly a family drama set around two long lost lovers. The beginning was character building and a trip down memory lane, half way through there's 2 pages that hit hard and take Alison and this story on its course.

A reminder of teenage years of time gone by and how a chance encounter decades later that can shake your whole world!

I really enjoyed Dan and Alison's story.

#firstloves #familydrama #romance #secondchances #nostalgic

Really couldn't get along with this book, although I had high hopes from reading the blurb. It felt like it wasn't as gripping as I needed it to be. I get bored too easily!

I have mixed feelings about this book by Jane Harper. I loved the premise of the story with Allison and Dan and Dan instead of telling her of his feelings he makes Allison a mixtape to show her how he feels. Also, the relationship that she has with his parents, it was kind of sweet. Then twenty years later he sends links to songs that they once listened together was different to anything that I have read. They still had things in common.
Even though this book was written well. This book left me with questions. Why would you get back together with someone you haven’t seen in 20 years on a whim and split two families up? People may change in that time. Maybe I am a bit old fashioned. Sorry didn’t really agree with the ending. Three stars from me.

Interesting read and storytelling.

As a firm lover of mix tapes myself I loved the idea of an international mix tape for the modern day! The story is told in the past and the present tense (1979 and 2012) of the two main characters.

Its a fun back and forth ride that is filled with laughs and will have you flipping the pages to find out what happens next!

The characters are wholly relatable and full of such character that you find yourself rooting for them to get to the happy ending you want to happen.

This was a sweet read for the summer and it was nice and easy to follow along with.

This story blends the past and the present expertly. It draws you into the relationships and makes you want to know more. The pacing is perfect. The modern mix tape brought out the emotions that were deeply hidden away and yet lurking near the surface. It was a wonderful way to create the closeness of the characters that were so far away, emotionally and physically.

Jane Sanderson's novel is a huge nostalgia fest of a read with its central theme of how fundamentally music connects us to other people and so effectively evokes an era, personal histories, and past memories as if they happened just yesterday. Mix Tape succeeds in bringing back my past, of how I too made mix tapes to share with close friends, and some of them also made their own particular mixes. This novel takes the reader back to the late 1970s and the music I adored back then. Those mix tapes quintessentially captured an essential essence of who I and my friends were, with our differently flavoured collections of music, taking us back to what we were experiencing then and the intense feelings and emotions, and I still have many of those tapes. It is not surprising that this book resonated in so many ways for me.

In the present, it is 2012, and middle aged music journalist, Daniel Lawrence and novelist, Alison Connor live respectively in Edinburgh and Adelaide, Australia. Each is married, with their separate families, then Daniel sends a song via Twitter to Ali that immediately immerses her back to their shared past as teenagers. In 1978 in Sheffield, Dan and Ali got together with their love of music, but Ali had secrets, trauma and tragedy that cause her to disappear completely from Dan's life. She goes on to move to Australia with her partner, Michael, whilst Dan settles with Katelin in the beautiful historical city of Edinburgh. However, both feel a sense of vague dissatisfaction and an air of something missing in the lives they are living, and neither has forgotten the other. In a narrative that moves from the past and the present, with Dan and Ali's love be reawakened? Will they survive a path littered with obstacles and challenges to find each other again, and what will it cost each of them?

Sanderson gives us a great sense of varied locations and time in this well written story of love, friendship, family, rape, alcoholism, being a parent, and the integral theme of the power of music, I found myself getting engaged with Dan and Ali and their life stories. There is some unevenness in the novel, and it did inspire occasional feelings of unease, but overall its a great read. Many thanks to Random House Transworld for an ARC.

I wasn't sure what rating to give this book, I changed my mind a few times. At some points it was a 3,sometimes a 4.
I'll start with the good points. I loved Dan, Ali, not so much but I was rooting for her. Her relationship with Dan's dad was beautiful, that bond of friendship and paternalistic support was very well written. I also liked the switching between the current day and the past.

What I didn't like so much was the middle part of the book where the emotions seemed to have been replaced with songs (this might work better if you know or listen to the songs). What should have been the moan emotional high point of the book was, for me, a little underwhelming.

My rating was bumped up to 4/5 as the ending was back on track.

A tantalising book of ‘what ifs’ that challenges your perceptions.

I liked that you get to see the main characters as they are and as they were, it gives great insight and I love books about people and their relationships to each other.

Enjoyable read.

Less than a week ago I wrote in the review for another (very cliched) book "how I long to read about a romance between ordinary people with none of the stereotypical cliches of hate turning to love etc etc'. Well, someone was listening because here it is, a lovely romance between two human beings whose very ordinariness makes them easy to relate to and to like.

Alison and Dan were in their teens when they met in 1979. They split up soon after when Alison disappeared leaving Dan bereft and now more than 30 years later their paths cross again when Dan finds Alison (now living in Australia) is a best selling novelist. He sends her a link to a song which has meaning for them both and soon they are exchanging songs across the oceans.

Alison and Dan are in relationships with other people. Both have children, both have much to lose. When Dan goes to Australia to surprise Alison we don't know whether she will go with her heart or her head.

This is so much more than chick lit. It touches on serious issues not least the reason why Alison ran away in the first place and takes a thoughtful and compassionate approach to affairs of the heart. The use of songs to express what's going on is very good though I confess that it was beginning to jar just a little towards the end, Overall though I loved it and am very grateful to the publisher and to NetGalley for the ARC.

Loved this story. Music is so powerful and can transport you in an instant and this story did the same. Often tender, heart breaking and joyful, the characters were well written, believable and relatable.

I was so excited to read this book after reading the amazing reviews on netgalley. However, I struggled to get into the story more than I expected. There are some hard hitting topics littered in the book but I never fully engaged with it which meant it took me a few days to finish it. Overall, I’ve given it 3 stars.