Ben and Daphne have been together for years, since they met at Uni. But it hasn’t always been plain sailing and lately things are looking very rocky. He is wondering if he made the right choice back then, and if Alice, another girl from uni, really was the one that got away. Alice is now back in touch and Ben isn’t sure what he should do and whilst voicing this to his best friend in the pub on Christmas Eve, he is approached by and old man who gives him a watch.
The next day Ben is shocked and confused when he wakes up to find its December 2005, the night he kissed Daphne and their relationship began. Ben must figure out what he wants again.
I really enjoyed this book, a really lovely modern take on a timeless tale. The authors writing style is easy to read and the story telling brings the characters to life so that you feel engaged and invested in them.
Filled with lots of humour and some lovely touching moments, I thought the story line was clever in its reinvention of such a well known tale as a huge part of the story that resulted in a delightful book to read that I would definitely recommend.
My thanks to NetGalley, HQ and Tom Ellen for allowing me to read this book in return for an honest review.

This is a nice enough book, but it did not ‘wow’ me. The story is based on Ben and his ‘could have/should have’ previous relationship with Alice, when he gets the opportunity to revisit the Christmas Eve year’s ago when he decided to marry Daphne. His marriage is now going through a very rocky patch, and he feels he may have made the wrong choice back then. There is a strong element of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol here, and Ben can see the man he could have been, instead of the man he has become.
An interesting premise, but it just didn’t hold my interest, and I didn’t particularly warm to the characters.
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my advance copy of this title.

Do you ever wish you could turn the clock back and make a different decision?
Who would you have married?
Ben has been with Daphne for years but its Christmas and it seems their marriage is heading for the rocks. An old flame, Alice has been in touch and Ben has agreed to meet her for a drink. He is in the pub when he is given a watch and the next thing he knows its December 2005.
Will he regret the way his life has turned out or will he realise what he has?

Usually a fan of the festive season, this year Ben is struggling. His relationship with his wife is on the rocks and he is stuck in a rut. When an old friend gets back in touch, Ben can’t help but wonder, was she the one he was meant to be with all along.

Drowning his sorrows in a bar on Christmas Eve, Ben never imagines a chance encounter with a mysterious watch seller will send him back to the very beginning.

Now Ben must make the biggest decision of his life - if you could turn back the clock, would you choose a different life?

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started this book. I was aware it was a rom-com but was going to take a little suspended imagination, which I must admit isn’t usually my thing. However, this turned out to be a nice, easy, and somewhat festive read.

The time travel element was intriguing, being able to look upon your past decisions with fresh eyes is certainly an alluring thought and does make the reader question what they would do in this situation.

Sadly, I found most of the characters to be a little bland, and therefore I didn’t feel any great connection to them or empathise with their circumstances. Ben actively annoyed me at times, and I wanted to give him a good shake, but I did begin to warm to him towards the end of the story.

A Sliding Doors-esque version of A Christmas Carol with a lot of promise but didn’t quite deliver. If you are looking for a straightforward and perhaps predictable winter read, this could be the one for you. But if you are after something thought provoking and more in depth, perhaps give this one a miss.

An excellent story of how Ben reaching his mid thirties begins to find that his thoughts are filled with lots of regrets from his past. He tends to bottle things up rather than share them. So on one Christmas Eve he goes to the pub for a pint with his mate to open his heart however it doesn’t go the way he wanted as his mate just laughed it off. He receives an unexpected gift of a watch from the watch seller which changes his life. For better or worse well you just have to read to find outt

Ben has the chance to see if he made the right choice many years ago. Would he have been happier with Alice or Daphne? A modern day version of A Christmas Carol with the past, future and present. It took me a little while to get into this book and am very pleased I persevered with it, Ben has a lovely wife, mother and friends but is he satisfied? Sadly not, he’s a bit of a moaner! I enjoyed the “visits” to the various moments in his past as well as the peeks into his future. Plenty of poignant and funny moments. Definitely not a run of the mill romance and would be a great novel for anyone who enjoys something a little different. Just avoid old men with twinkling eyes in the pub if they try to sell you a watch!

This is the first book that I have read by Tom Ellen and I look forward to reading more in the future. This beautiful romantic/time travel story is very well written and it has some great characters. I thought the story was both heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. Well worth a read. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

This was such a sweet retelling (I had t realised it was a retelling), and really put me in the mood for winter and christmas! It was a quick read with likeable and realistic characters. I though the story was great. I think we can all relate to wondering “what if” and it it tackled this in a really thoughtful way!

All About Us is the kind of story that you would want to read on a rainy day, the raindrops dropping onto a tin roof, hypnotising you and carrying you away into the story. It’s not typically a genre that I often read but you know what people say about change. Tom Ellen has created a story that comes straight from the heart – It’s as addictive as chocolate. I want to shout out loud about how good this magical tale really is. He has that perfect formula for making a novel stand out in an oversaturated market and makes it more than memorable.

We make decisions when we are young, would you change it if you really could? Our decisions are what shapes us, makes the person we are. It’s human nature to make mistakes but is it a step too far to try and change them? I’m not sure I would, I’d probably just end up making bigger ones. Life is dragging Ben down, university was fifteen years ago, and he has become the stereotypical jaded bloke. He’s unhappy with how his career has gone, his marriage has changed, and he doesn’t know what direction to move in. I think as a person of a certain age, we can appreciate feeling like that at some point in our lives, right?

All About Us sets the scene – it’s Christmas 2020 and a last-minute drink with his best mate leads to a stranger with a watch. A stranger, a watch and some very intrusive questions. Ben is in a rut with wife, Daphne. He reminisces and wonders what life would have been like if he had got with his friend, Alice. Enter the stranger with a broken watch that is stuck at one minute to midnight.

You start to wonder about the bad decisions you’ve made in life, don’t you? Or the wrong turnings you might have taken and whether you could go back and change things – Would you?

Tom Ellen captures the desperation and the desolation that can often be felt in marriage and life in general after a long period of time. Routines become ingrained and completed without thought and things end up being taken for granted whether we intend it to or not. The compulsively written narrative puts you in the midst of the story. The author created a vivid connection between the protagonist, Ben, his dilemma and the reader, without it being taken as arrogant.

All About Us is a modern-day retelling of A Christmas Carol by Dickens. I completely fell in love with the characters and loved that it was told from a thirty-something viewpoint. It was moving, beautiful and completely heart-wrenching.

A beautiful Christmassy novel perfect for snuggling under a blanket with a hot chocolate.

Do you ever wonder what if you had made different decisions in your life? So does Ben, the protag of this novel; he has been with Daphne for 15 years but, as things are souring, he wonders if he should have chosen Alice instead.

This book is cleverly crafted as Ben explores key moments from his relationship and how small changes can make all of the different with a twist that I didn't see coming although so readers may be able to guess at it.

If you had the chance to go back in time and make different choices would you? It's 24 December 2020 and Ben is despondent. His marriage is rocky, his career is unfulfilling and he feels that perhaps he is living the wrong life. His confusion is exacerbated by a message from the past - his Uni friend Alice who wants to meet for a drink. He agrees.

Out for a drink with his friend Harv, he tries to open up about his problems, but it's not what they do as friends. A scraggly-bearded man hands him a gift - a broken watch, the hands permanently stuck at one minute to midnight. Thinking little of it, Ben goes home and finishes off a bottle of wine whilst attempting to retrieve the Xmas decorations from the attic. The next thing he knows, he's waking up in 2005 - the night he met his wife to be Daphne.

As he jumps in time to significant dates in his life, he realises that he would choose Daphne every time, and the problems they were having were not because he didn't love her, but because he hadn't been honest and he hadn't believed in himself. It was much easier to self-pity and push her away.

He gets a glimpse at the alternative life he could have been leading had he chosen Alice, and it only makes him more sure than ever that he'd made the right choice all those years ago. Daphne is home to him.

Finally making it back to the present, Daphne finds him in the attic, and he tells her everything. His doubts, his confusion, his betrayals. Will she be able to forgive him? Will he get the chance to live the life he knows in his heart is right for him?

A gorgeously romantic and heartfelt story, readers will fall in love with Ben and Daphne and be rooting for them to find their happy ending.

I remain pleasantly surprised at how genuinely wonderful this story was. All About Us is an enchanting invitation to soul-search. I went into Ellen's novel thinking I was about to get some regurgitation of Josie Silver's One Day in December, a book that I sadly didn't connect with. I thought it would be the story of 'what if he chose Alice instead of Daphne?' but, thankfully, it took a completely different direction. I think I would have had numerous problems with the book had it taken my original train of thought!

All About Us is very much a retelling of A Christmas Carol, with hints of The Time Traveler's Wife. Tom Ellen gives readers a taste of pure, simplistic writing that refrains from overcomplicating what could be an overwhelming narrative, instead setting a basic scene and allowing the story to spiral perfectly outwards. Yes, time travel is involved, but we don't have to worry about butterfly effects!

There were so many elements that I loved: the old man -- the ghost, I suppose -- the intricate thought processes, the numerous 'what if' moments that turned into 'I shouldn't have' moments, the moments of self-realisation and revelations of moments that Ben was never initially present for. I found myself wondering oftentimes about what I'd do in this situation, about how I would react if I was suddenly thrust back in time to specific moments of my past. It's mind-boggling, but All About Us is written so beautifully that there's no time to be confused. It's an adventure -- not a perfect one, by any means, and not one that you'd like to take multiple times, but an adventure nonetheless!

Trigger Warnings: death by an aneurysm, mention of adultery.

Thank you to Netgalley, HQ and Tom Ellen for providing me with an e-copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

This is a must-read for romantics. It is like sliding doors and a fantastic debut novel.
You become emotionally entangled with Bens' trip through possibilities and what decisions he will take.
Please sit down and read this for a bit of escapism and ENJOY.

Sam is married to Daphne but it isn't going great. He spends a lot of time thinking about Alice, the one that got away and wondering if she was who who he was really meant to be with. Then, borrowing the structure of Dickens A Christmas Carol, he gets to see his Christmas past, present and future with variations. It was an interesting premise, although the time travelling conceit has been used a lot. For me, almost more interesting than the love story, was Sam's journey of self discovery where he makes the links between his past and why he behaves the way he does. It reminded me of the Robert Burns quote "Oh would some power the gift give us, To see ourselves as others see us". Being able to go back and view his past self with a bit of distance give Sam some objectivity. I think a lot of men will empathise with Sam's struggles to talk meaningfully about his emotions to his friends. This felt like a love story between past Sam and present Sam, him learning to like himself more, a valuable lesson for us all.

I've been quite vocal about how non rom-com-focused commercial fiction is not for me, but then I am occasionally surprised by books that do appeal. I requested All About Us because it looked romantic and it was blurbed by Holly Bourne, and I really liked it! It's A Christmas-Carol-esque tale of Ben, who wakes up on Christmas Day 2020 (you can tell this book was written pre-corona), unhappy with his life, his job and his marriage. What follows is a whirl through the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, as Ben learns to re-evaluate his priorities and face his flaws. This was a great, warm story about missed chances and regrets and piecing it all back together. The world felt very real, Daphne was great, and there was a very appealing romance at the centre of this book, which I obviously love! I really liked skimming through the different parts of Ben's life, and although this certainly wasn't life-changing or beautifully written, it was an absorbing book that was so easy and quick to read, and that I definitely looked forward to picking up again! 4 🌟

I really enjoyed this book, unfortunately it begins at Christmas 2020 with no reference to lockdown or Covid. As the dates are so clearly noted it really jarred as I was reading it during August 2020. It is such a shame , as the story was absolutely involving and I really cared if the narrator could learn from his past, in order to change his future behaviour. If there was any way it could be changed to begin Christmas 2019 I believe it would fly off the shelves.

A beautiful, poignant read about love, loss, and how often we take things for granted.
I adored this book, and one of my highlights was definitely the whole past/present/future aspect it followed and they ways in which your actions have consequences.

This is a story that will stay with me for a while, I loved it.

What a wonderful novel! Skilfully crafted and a very easy read.

Ben has always loved Christmas, but this year he's struggling with the very idea of a festive season. His marriage to Daphne is on a very shaky footing and he finds himself spending more and more time thinking of Alice, the one that got away. Surely, if he had made other choices earlier in life he would be happier now, wouldn't he? But then he meets a strange little man who gives him a watch which doesn't work only for Ben to wake up the next morning back in time before all his problems had began. Can he make the right choices this time around?

For a debut novel, this is quite something! There is a magical feel to it all, and I really didn't have time to consider the time-travel aspect - I'm not a great lover of the genre. However, this book has a very different vibe from what I would expect; it's a fast moving story packed full of details and quite enchanting. It's very easy to be silently cheering Ben on whilst continually thinking 'what a plonker'! A thoroughly entertaining read which is very enjoyable and totally worth 4.5* and a hearty recommendation to add this author to your 'must not miss' list.

My thanks to the publisher for my copy via NetGalley; this is - as always - my honest, original and unbiased review.

Thank you to Net Gallery for letting me read this book early. I hardly reads books from a male perspective however I throughly enjoyed it. I loved the story and how it connects to the characters. I would totally recommend this book.

I really enjiyed this story.

Im sure everyone has always wondered what would happen if you could go back and change just one thing, or do one thing slightly differently. Would it create a domino effect? Or would it all work out how it supposed to.

I loved this concept in the book. What I loved the most as this isn't your typical time travel book that what you do in the past changes the future. It doesn't change anything apart from the person doing the travelling. Learning how to be a decent person and the mistakes you make along the way.

This is a story of love and working out if you made the right decision and what you could change. It is very thought provoking and deffinitely made me look at my own present and past and what I could have done differently.