May 6

May 6 This Time Tomorrow

Author: Emma Straub
Publisher: Riverhead
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

What if you could take a vacation to your past?

With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice's life isn't terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn't exactly the one she expected. She's happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn't just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it's her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?

TL;DR Review

This Time Tomorrow is a heartwarming, tear-jerking super-readable novel about nostalgia and a daughter’s fierce love for (and from) a single parent. I really, really enjoyed it.

For you if: You’re a litfic reader looking for something a bit on the lighter side, but still excellent.

Full Review

Emma Straub does it again, y’all. (Did we have any doubts?) Compulsively readable (without being fluffy), This Time Tomorrow is a fresh and fun approach to the time-travel story — sort of a reverse 13 Going on 30, and at once heartwarming and tear-jerking. I read the last two-thirds in a single sitting and just loved the whole experience so much.

The story is about a woman named Alice, who grew up on the Upper West Side with a single father (whose livelihood happened to be secured when his only published novel was turned into a beloved TV show). We start at her 40th birthday — she’s doing OK, but struggling with a meh career, a busy best friend, and the terminal illness of her father. But then she wakes up the next morning, and … she’s 16 again!

I won’t give anything else away, because part of the beauty of this book was discovering how Alice reacted, what she ultimately wanted, and everything that came next. But here’s what you can expect from this one: laughter, tears, nostalgia, deep friendship, regrets (or not), what it means to lead a life well-lived, what matters most and what matters least and how we only know the difference in hindsight — oh, and a possibly magical cat.

If you’re a contemporary reader looking for something a little deeper, or a literary fiction reader looking for something a little lighter, this is the perfect in-between. The perfectly timed beach read for litfic lovers. Fun and heart and time travel.