Thank you to NetGalley, Renegade Books, and the author for granting my request to read this e-ARC and provide my honest opinions.

Diary and manifestations; second chances and love; freedom and control

I thought that this book was meant to be powerful, a book that shows you can start again and go for what you want regardless of age.

Stand up for yourself.... I mean, really stand and believe in yourself. This book shows that you can be that girl✨ who has her shit together in every aspect.

But it was too long; the author kept spinning me in every direction that I didn't know where to really focus on. The manifestations—what was that about? A lot of things felt off and didn't tie well with the plot.

But the ending, damn. The author did a good one there.

🌱 | Can't wait to jump into this one next!

Thoughts: [Pending Review]
✨𝒯𝒽𝒶𝓃𝓀 you for the e-book.

When Anika Lapo wakes up in hospital on her thirtieth birthday, it's not dying she's afraid of: her real fear is how much of her life she has wasted. After a successful operation, she vows not to lose another second.

From the beginning, I was hooked!!! The vibes were immaculate! I really liked the writing style, I found it to be very immersive and addictive, in the end I couldn’t put the book down. I really liked Cam’s character, the flirtatious banter, the confidence but also the calm that emanated from him was really refreshing. I loved how Anika and Cam’s relationship developed from the flirty banter to their more profound discussions, I think they complemented each other very well. I liked how the flashbacks explained their strong connection.
This book is really the perfect mix of sadness, grief, anger, resentment, hope, love. Anika made me go through every emotion in this book. Her journey was very chaotic, but it was worth it in the end. I also love that there were so many music references included (even though I didn’t get them, it was nice to read about them).

The premise of this book instantly drew me in, as I found Anika's situation somewhat relatable. I also loved the idea of a main character who's DJing because I equated that with the promise of some cool music finds; I love the UK music scene and I think this book was really nicely written in that domain.

I think depending on where you are in life, Anika's story will resonate more or less but it's also a very universal story of a woman trying to love herself and believe in herself despite hardships. At the same time, she's also faced with the idea of mortality and I think many readers will relate to the feeling of desperation and urgency to achieve something that is borne out of that realization, and the way that it sometimes leads us to mess up certain things when we're too focused on the future and not on what we already have.

However, as much as I understand where Anika was coming from, there were a lot of her actions that just felt too rude. I also felt that the writing in third POV was too impersonal, which made me not connect much with her and the combination of those things made it difficult to not be extremely frustrated at her decisions. This feeling stayed with me for so long throughout my read that by the end of the book, it was the dominant aspect of the experience and made the ending less impactful than it could've been.

About the other aspects of it, I liked the intensity of the romance between Cam and Anika but also feel that it lacked the development that would've really made me root for the relationship. As it is, it kinda feels like it moves too fast and without a deeper connection between the characters. Similarly, the friendships were well-written but I didn't exactly feel them.

In short, the writing and approaches just felt too impersonal for me to really build a connection with the characters and feel for them, which is a bit unfortunate in a book that centers emotion a lot. It's also a little too long and gets a bit repetitive between the 40-80% mark and then rushes through the ending.

Overall, not a favorite read, perhaps it was not quite a book for me but if you've been in Anika's situation or something similar, I can see this being a very relatable and important book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC.

I love the symbolism of everything this book represents. I love that it showcases second chances and how we are enough that it’s always wonderful to improve one’a selves but to know we already matter as we are before the transformation begins it’s just dusting off who we were meant to be along the way. It is such a poignant and beautiful novel. I highly enjoyed it!