This book covers it all from relationships to lies, betrayal, hope, joy, loss, doubt, friendship, family and more. It’s a collision of a number of events on one day and how they affect the main characters and, in turn, how that affects others. This book shows what people don’t always consider, that one person’s decision can have consequences for so many others. Even the most unassuming of decisions can change lives. Sometimes this is in a good way, and sometimes it’s not, but there is always a change, however small.

If you read the book you’ll understand why I didn’t like all of the characters, I don’t think that would be a surprise. But all of them are written so brilliantly that even the ones I didn’t like, I felt some degree of empathy towards. There are a few standout characters too, Nancy and Val being two of them. Those two are how I want to be when I read their age, dealing with what life throws at them as best they can with sass, humour and determination.

There is joy and lightness in this book but there’s also a lot of tension. Tress goes into labour (not a spoiler!) and uses breathing exercises to help with the pain. At times I felt I needed them too, to remind me to breathe as I read through each characters chapter. I spent each chapter wanting what was happening to that character, but also desperate to get back to the others to see what was happening with them.

Shari Low’s books are always brilliant, this one is no exception. She takes a seemingly ordinary day, fills it with events and shows how much can change in a minute. But the books also show that it’s the small things that make life what it is, whether that’s a stranger buying someone a coffee, a random conversation on a train or even just someone holding a door open for you. It’s the things that seem inconsequential, that get lost in all the day to day chaos, that can turn out to be more important than we ever expect. These books remind me of this and this is one of the many reasons I continue reading them, to remind myself that everything can change in an instant and nothing should be taken for granted.

I really enjoyed reading this book. The characters are well developed. I loved the characters of Tress and Noah!! This story is told in a 24 hour period. It is told from multiple point of views but it is clear which is which. I really enjoyed this book and the writing. It is a light, quick and engaging read!

This book is mostly about two couples. Tress and Max. Tress is pregnant with Max's baby. Noah and Anya. Noah is Max's best friend from childhood. Insert two elderly neighbors, Nancy and Val. They are eccentric and lovable! Max and Anya are off on what their spouses think is a work trip but it's really a couple getaway. Tress goes into labor. She is desperately trying to get in touch with her husband. Nancy and Val bring her to the hospital. While Max and Anya try to get to the hospital they are in a horrible crash. There is so much going on and it is so intriguing!!

This was my first book by Shari Low and I look forward to reading more of her books in the future. Thank you to Shari Low, Boldwood Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

So much can change in one day, can't it? Noah and Anya, Max and Tress, perfect couples and close friends. But, secrets never seem to stay secret, do they? Nancy. Tress' widowed neighbor is looking for a second-chance love. Do leopards really change their spots? All will be revealed in one day - but the clean-up is going to take a lot longer.

Thank you Boldwood Books and NetGalley for the digital ARC in return for an honest review.

24 hours. 24 hours and your whole world can turn upside down. That's what happened to two couples, 2 best friends and their spouses. As what started off as a regular day, Tress, who is excited about her first baby, kisses her husband Max goodbye as he prepares to leave on a business trip. Noah, Max's best friend since childhood, says goodbye to his wife Anya. As she walks out of the house he is wondering what will happen to their marriage.
Soon after Tress starts feeling contractions and is unable to contact Max. Noah can't stop thinking about Anya and decides to do something about it.

Their neighbor and good friend Nancy, recently widowed was debating on whether or not she should reconnect with her first love at their highschool renuion.

24 hours: decisions need to be made and truths are uncovered.

An intriguing story and one I couldn't put down!
So many twists and turns, the story was fast paced and kept me wanting to find out what's going to happen next.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book!

This story was everything and more. Great characters (some from a previous book of hers), real life drama, love and relationships.
I especially loved the strong friendship between Val and Nancy and the way they tackled their difficulties with humour and resilience. This certainly made me smile.
So cleverly written and set over a 24 hour period. It was pacy and I just could not put it down.
I felt every moment of the book, the good, the bad and the ugly. No spoiler alerts!!!
I loved it. Just cannot wait for the next book by the talented Shari Low! One of my favourite books read in 2023.

I’ve really enjoyed reading this book. Taking place over course of a day, two couples are completely unaware that their lives won’t be the same by the end of it. My favourite character was Nancy, I couldn’t stop laughing at what she got up to with with Val. I liked the multiple POV’s from the different characters, even if I did get a little confused at where I was. Absolutely heartbreaking in parts, this story is full of drama and ultimately lays bare the consequences of infidelity. Emotional and gripping I couldn’t put this book down.

"We deal with the hard stuff that's in front of us, but we need to make the best of it."
Tress waved her perfect husband Max off to work, with no idea she was about to go into labor with their first child. And completely unaware that when she tried to track Max down, he wouldn't be where he was supposed to be. At the same time, Max's best friend Noah said goodbye to his wife, Anya, blissfully oblivious that he would soon discover the woman he adored had been lying to him for years. Living alongside the two couples, their recently widowed friend, Nancy, is getting ready to meet Eddie, her first true love at a school reunion. Will Nancy have the chance to rekindle an old flame, or will she choose to stay by Tress's side when she needs her most?

This book was more intense than I was anticipating it to be! It was an emotional roller coaster of an experience for me. Each person's perspective in the beginning would give just enough information to make you question what was happening, before some mind-blowing revelation that then moved to the next person. The book wasn't kidding when it said one day, five lives, who will be heartbroken by nightfall? The answer was me. But no seriously, it explores one life changing day for Max, Tress, Anya, Noah and Nancy. I was a little shocked that Anya's view wasn't explored to be honest. It seemed like some insight from her view would have been crucial to elements of the novel.

I think the characters were well rounded and full of vast experiences. The best most lovable characters were Nancy, Val and Angie who were mostly secondary characters. All of these individuals are connected to each other and the book looks at the consequences that one day, full of revelations, has on each of their lives. I kid you not that this book had me on the edge of my seat, but not because it was shocking, simply because I wanted to know how the characters would react. It was pretty obvious to see what was coming with the "major" plot points. I kind of wish they had been more surprising. I also would have liked Anya's perspective. The ending felt a bit meh for me, but other than that the book was a lovely examination of love, friendship and what it means to be a family.

For 3/4 of the book, I was very engaged in this multi-viewpoint story of one day in the life of a group of friends and neighbors. However the book lost steam around midnight and the ending was not very satisfying or creative.
This is the second Shari Low book I've read where the cover tease text does not fit the narrative of the story. <spoiler>Two hellos, two goodbyes. So the baby is a hello and Max dying is a goodbye. Who are the other two? If it's the two guys at the Nancy's high school reunion, that is not worthy of mentioning on the cover. </spoiler>
*I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher and I am required to disclose that in my review in compliance with federal law.

Tress is about to give birth to Max’s baby, but he’s on a trip to London and she can’t get hold of him. Noah is Max’s best friend and looking for his wife Anya, but when Noah finds his wife and his best friend in the same car accident, he has to question why they are together. Getting to the hospital Tress is now in labour and it is Noah who has to be there for Tress while she delivers her baby as well as delivering the devastating news of why her husband isn’t there.

Low writes this novel over the space of 24 hours with five different points of view. These individuals are all connected in different ways and two events will intertwine this narrative, showing us themes of love, life and heartache.

My favourite character was Nancy and her friends, I loved how witty she was and how she embraced life and the people around her. Each character that Low writes about is individual and I love how they intertwine into one another lives in different ways. This is cleverly done and shows such talent in this author's writing.

I have read this author before and cannot recommend them enough!

This was a really interesting story. The same day in 5 different peoples lives and what their life looks afterwards. My heart broke for Tress and Noah. Their kindness and calm in the face of enormous betrayal was really powerful. I’ll definitely be reading more from this author.

⭐️Rating: 4/5
✍🏼Author: Shari Low
📖Genre: Women’s Fiction

Summary::

In just one day, five lives are forever changed. Noah Clark finds that his wife has been lying to him for years. Unsure what realities he will have to face once he confronts her. Meanwhile his best friend Max is also hiding a huge lie from his expecting wife Tress. Living alonside the two couples, recently widowed Nancy is gearing up to meet her ex love of her life at her school reunion- will she find love again? Two fateful goodbyes, two unexpected hellos and 24 hours that changes everything.

My thoughts::

This book is so beautifully written, you get multiple POVs from each of the characters and really get a chance to attach to them. At the core of this book is the lesson of forgiveness, even through the impossible. Noah Clark, is an Angel and I absolutely loved his character. Nancy and Val were also good characters as well. Be prepared to ride the waves of different emotions.

Thank you to boldwood books and Shari Low for a copy of this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

One day with who? One day with multiple characters really. The title didn’t work here. The ending felt forced and rushed, just not cohesive after all that happened. The writing was good, and the story did flow. This was an easy read.

EXCERPT: Val was still fidgeting with her phone and Nancy got that. They were both convinced that being of a certain age gave them an affliction that caused severe delays at every stage of mobile phone use. Wrong password. Face I.D. not working. Thumbprint buggered. And then when they did get in, they needed to suss out whether they had received a Facebook message, a snapchat, WhatsApp, a text, or an alert from an energy company saying that their next electricity bill was going to require them to remortgage the house. After Val had worked her way through all of these options, she shook her head. 'Nope, wasn't me either.'
'Och, bugger . . .' Nancy mumbled, pulling her bag onto her lap and having a rummage, before finally liberating her phone. She hadn't even thought to check because she didn't expect anyone to be looking for her. Unless it was Angie wanting new batteries for her hand fans.
Thumbprint? Not working. Two attempts to enter the password? Finally in. Text? Nope. WhatsApp? Nope. Facebook message? There it was.
'Right girls, hang on to your knickers.' She cleared her throat and started reading. 'New message from Eddie Mackie:
Nancy I couldn't sleep last night for thinking about seeing you again tonight. We've got so many years to make up for. Counting the hours. Love, Eddie.'
The other two didn't say a word, just eyed her expectantly, waiting for her reaction. Ten minutes ago, she'd decided she wasn't going, and she stood by that decision. She wasn't the kind of woman to be swayed by mushy words that romantic fairy tales. She was too old and too long in the tooth to go chasing after fantasies.
Wasn't she?
Oh, bugger it!
'Tress, love,' she blurted. 'I just need a word with the wee one.' She leaned forward so that she was speaking to Tress's bump. 'Son, I know you're probably comfy in there, floating about without a care in the world, but if I could ask a wee favour. Could you hurry up and get ready to slide down that shute the second yer daddy gets here, because Aunty Nancy has a party to go to.'

ABOUT 'ONE DAY WITH YOU': One day, five lives, but whose hearts will be broken by nightfall?
It started like any other day in the picturesque village of Weirbridge.

Tress Walker waved her perfect husband Max off to work, with no idea that she was about to go into labour with their first child. And completely unaware that when she tried to track Max down, he wouldn’t be where he was supposed to be.

At the same time, Max’s best friend Noah Clark said goodbye to his wife, Mya, blissfully oblivious that he would soon discover the woman he adored had been lying to him for years.

And living alongside the two couples, their recently widowed friend, Nancy Jenkins, is getting ready to meet Eddie, her first true love at a school reunion. Will Nancy have the chance to rekindle an old flame, or will she choose to stay by Tress’s side when she needs her most?

One Day with You - two fateful goodbyes, two unexpected hellos, and 24 hours that change everything.

MY THOUGHTS: I am really torn about this book. On one level, I loved it. I loved the drama, the tragedy, the love, the humour. On another level, I found it repetitive in many places, and occasionally flat. There were instances where I felt I was being 'told' instead of experiencing things.

I did have some difficulty initially getting into this read and dallied over the opening chapters for a few days. But once I did, I read the final 60% in one sitting, hardly daring to breathe. I laughed, I cried, I got angry, I empathised, I shook my head in despair and crossed my fingers for luck.

Nancy and Val and their antics are very important to the book. They provide some light relief for the darker thread that runs through the plot involving the very pregnant Tress, her husband Max, his best friend Noah, and Noah's wife Anya.

One Day With You is an intensely emotional read featuring, amongst other things, infidelity, death, dementia, and second-chance love. A bizarre mix, but it mostly works. It is told from the points of view of Tress, Max, Noah and Nancy, the bulk of the story taking place over a twenty four hour period.

I don't believe either the cover art or the comments on the cover reflect the true nature of this book. To me they suggest a lighthearted read. One Day With You is anything but.

⭐⭐⭐.5

#OneDayWithYou #NetGalley

I: @sharilowbooks @bookandtonic

T: @sharilow @BoldwoodBooks

#contemporaryfiction #domesticdrama #friendship #romance

THE AUTHOR: In real life, once upon a time she met a guy, got engaged after a week, and twenty-something years later she lives near Glasgow with her husband and a labradoodle. Her two teenagers have now left home, so she spends an inordinate amount of time on video calls checking if they're eating well and keeping up to date with their laundry.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Boldwood Books via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of One Day With You by Shari Low for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review is also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

One Day With You by Shari Low
One day, five lives, but whose heart will be broken by nightfall?
It started like any other day in the picturesque village of Weirbridge.
Tress Walker waved her perfect husband, Max, off to work with no idea that she was about to go into labour with their first child. And completely unaware that when she tried to track Max down, he wouldn't be where he was supposed to be.
At the same time, Max's best friend, Noah Clark, said goodbye to his wife, Anya, blissfully oblivious that he would soon discover the woman he adored had been lying to him for years.
And living alongside the two couples, their recently widowed friend, Nancy Jenkins, is getting ready to meet Eddie, her first true love, at a school reunion. Will Nancy have the chance to rekindle an old flame, or will she choose to stay by Tress's side when she needs her most?
One Day with You - two fateful goodbyes, two random hellos, and 24 hours that change everything.
Well, what a great read; this story has it all; it encompasses family and friendships and has an uplifting, engaging plot full of diverse emotions; Dementia, infidelity, grief, hurt and love are all touched on with sensitivity and passion. With fabulous characters and realistic scenarios, you get immersed within each page of this story, turning each page quickly to see where the plot takes you next.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am happy to recommend it.
I want to thank Publishers Boldwood Books, author Shari Low and Rachel's Random Resources for a copy on tour and a copy to read and review.

Shari Low never fails to make me fall completely in love with her characters and their lives..and it has happened again with One Day With You! She has this amazing knack of telling a story that become utterly invested in and part of and doing it in a specific time span is such a clever way to create an added intensity to the drama.
One Day With You follows the lives of Noah, Tress and Nancy and the people in their lives. The are all linked by the pace they lived in and some by their past. As the story unfolds – the characters’ back stories are revealed and I became completely smitten by them. They are all adorable and I loved Noah’s gentle and supportive nature, Nancy’s sense of humour and Tress’s kind-hearted nature.
One Day With You is a great example of how things can change at the drop of a hat and how sometimes these changes can impact us and send our lives on totally different pathways. There’s so much drama to unpick but it is all woven together so well and just flows beautifully.
One Day With You is an beautiful, emotional rollercoaster. I laughed, cried and everything in-between and just wanted to be part of the characters’ lives. I highly recommend this novel with all my heart and if you have never read a Shari Low book before – get yourself one ordered and get going! You’ll thank me!

An absolutely outstanding read. Started reading thinking I would read a few chapters before sleeping and hours later still wide awake and now finishing while wiping away tears of joy and sadness.

Shari Low is an exceptionally talented author. I have read many of her books including those that she has written recently with Ross King and I have enjoyed them all.

This novel brings back some old favourites from previous books, which we as avid readers have grown to love. I enjoyed getting to know the new characters and their complex lives and how they intertwined with those characters brought back to delight us.

This is a story full of love, sadness, friendship and devastating loss which was a real rollercoaster of emotions. I would highly recommend it, as I would all of this author’s books.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Okay, so I read this in one sitting and I just have to say that I really, really enjoyed this novel.

Noah is such a good man. I think the course of the 24 hours in this novel, really hit him the most. He had to suffer through the tragedy of that day, while also trying to help Tress through her labor, all the while wondering where his wife was, only to not only discover a tragedy, but have to be professional as he unravels the mystery and betrayal of what he found. I can't imagine the trauma he suffered from that day alone.

Tress is also lovely and her story through that day is equally tragic and traumatizing. I don't know how she mustered the strength to give birth alone, but to also put aside her negative feelings of what she found out, so her child could have good moments as he came into the world.

As for Max and Mya, I have no empathy, sympathy, or compassion for either of them, besides Max, because he ultimately paid the highest price. Mya, however is completely irredeemable in my opinion. She was selfish as hell and her ultimate justification for being a terrible person who hurt three people in her selfishness was to blame it on a dead guy, tried to use a terrible analogy to justify her horrific actions and choices over the past five years, all the while minimizing her actions and behavior toward those around her. I legitimately hated her by the end of the novel. Every bad thing that happened to her she deserved.

I loved Nancy's side story as it brought some levity to a very heavy novel and I enjoyed her storyline interweaving throughout Noah and Tress's.

As for the epilogue, I loved how hopeful it was for Nancy, Tress, and Noah. While the story was beyond tragic and traumatic, the hope they all had at the end made it bittersweet and a lovely read.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC for a review!

I absolutely loved this book from the start and could not wait to read how the story would turn out. It is full of emotion, drama, intrigue, love & friendship, that has you laughing one minute (at the 2 lovely friend characters of Nancy & Val) and sad the next.

It is a story of love between 5 intertwined friends, but certainly based on real life scenario, rather than a soppy romance.

The story is beautifully written. The characters grip you with some of their actions wanting you to say aloud ‘Nooooo!!!’

Highly recommended and I cannot wait for Shari Low’s next book.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest, unbiased review.

I have read and enjoyed this author before and this was no exception. Really engrossing and as a reader you get very connected to the characters. I was slightly disappointed by the end but maybe as it wasn't quite neat enough for me - I won't spoil it for others!!

3.5 stars

This is a super tough book for me to review, and even harder to rate. Two couples who's lives intertwine in multiple ways are further connected over the course of one day. Its near impossible to fully review this without including spoilers, but this is definitely a book that will elicit a full range of emotions. It had a lot of potential, but ultimately, the characters kind of ruined it for me. On one hand, I really enjoyed Tress and Noah's characters. On the other hand, I completely despised Max and Mya's characters. And the way the four lives were connected and intertwined made it impossible to compartmentalize and separate the two emotions. And then I found myself both loving and hating Nancy and Val's characters. So the range of thoughts I had on so many different characters brought a potentially good book down a few notches for me.