Maybe Next Time

Maybe Next Time

Cesca Major

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780063239920. One Day meets Groundhog Day, in this heartwarming and emotionally poignant novel about a stressed woman who must relive the same day over and over, keeping her family and work life from imploding as she attempts to spare her husband from an unfortunate fate. It is an ordinary Monday and harried London literary agent Emma is flying out of the door as usual. Preoccupied with work and her ever growing to-do list, she fails to notice her lovely husband Dan seems bereft, her son can barely meet her eye, and her daughter won’t go near her. Even the dog seems sad. She is far too busy, buried deep in her phone; social media alerts pinging; clients messaging with “emergencies”; keeping track of a dozen WhatsApp groups about the kids’ sports, school, playdates, all of it. Her whole day is frantic—what else is new—and as she rushes back through the door for dinner, Dan is still upset. They fight, and he walks out, desolate, dragging their poor dog around the block. Just as she realizes it is their anniversary and she has forgotten, again, she hears the screech of brakes. Dan is dead. The next day Emma wakes up… and Dan is alive. And it’s Monday again. And again. And again. Emma tries desperately to change the course of fate by doing different things each time she wakes up: leaving WhatsApp, telling her boss where to get off, writing to Dan, listening to her kids, reaching out to forgotten friends, getting drunk and buying out Prada. But will Emma have the chance to find herself again, remember what she likes about her job, reconnect with her children, love her husband? Will this be enough to change the fate they seem destined for? A moving “What if” story of what it is to be a woman in the modern world—never feeling we’re getting it quite right—about learning to slow down and appreciate life that is sure to resonate with women’s fiction fans.


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  • TigerLily
    Apr 04, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

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  • bookgang
    Mar 30, 2025
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     I received an advanced copy of this book from William Morrow. Cesca Major will be a future guest on the Book Gang podcast as we discuss the challenges of writing a Groundhog Day story. 

    In the final acknowledgments of her book, Cesca Major shares that she was mid-contract with another book during the pandemic and found herself "... gripped with a desire to look more closely at her own life and how she was living it." In this poignant and heartfelt debut, this life examination is precisely the thread that ties these versions of our protagonist's life together in this Groundhog Day story that rocked my world. 

    In this novel, Emma is trapped in a never-ending Monday, reliving the same day repeatedly as she tries to save her husband and keep her family and work life from falling apart. 

    On the first Monday of our story, Emma is wrapping up another harried day of obligations and comes home to an angry husband. Dan has lovingly prepared an anniversary dinner and wrote the annual letter they will give each other on this special day. 

    The problem is that Emma has entirely forgotten the day's celebration and many previous celebration days, along with this symbolic letter of their year together. After this fight, Dan takes the dog for a walk and gets hit by a car. 

    When Emma goes to bed, Dan is dead and gone. But when she wakes up, he is alive. 
    This cycle repeats as Emma tries to keep Dan alive or tune into what the Universe is trying to tell her on this never-ending Monday.  

    Major weaves in relatable text message threads that become increasingly funnier as Emma stops caring about the nonsense and becomes singularly focused on her family. We can follow along on the silly bureaucratic demands of her volunteer position, the endless requests from the family, the missed calls from school, and the texts from Dan as she decides how to approach each day with him.

    We are acquainted with Dan & Emma's love story through this series of letters Dan writes to her that showcase the highs and lows of their relationship. 

    What I appreciated the most about these letter sequences is Major's ability for Dan to marvel at certain qualities that Emma possesses that he finds, initially, quite endearing. But, as the years go by, those things that he finds beautiful, like Emma's ability to make friends wherever she goes, start to lose their sparkle when she doesn't have enough time for her family. 

    For readers that love a bookish theme, Major weaves in intelligent and insightful commentary on Emma's demanding role as a literary agent and the authors she is juggling. As new authors make increasing demands on her time, tiny bits of the literary world spill onto pages. These sections were quite juicy about the experience with writers, reviewers, and agents.

    This book genre is among the trickiest to keep a reader engaged. With these repetitive sequences, how do you prevent a lag in your story or keep a reader from skimming the pages? While the middle falls into those familiar waters that start to create a lull, Major keeps the story moving with Emma's reactions, significant side character development, and a well-developed mystery with Dan's death sequences. 

    I am keeping this review spoiler-free, but I audibly gasped at the ending as the author weaves in a solid plot twist that shifts the book's story entirely. 

    Since the pandemic, there is something about a book that reminds us how valuable our lives are and how precious time is with our loved ones. This selection will resonate with any reader that needs therapeutic reinforcement on these principles. I will count this among some of my favorite time travel stories and recommend this to anyone who loved This Time Tomorrow.  This novel will publish on March 23rd, so reserve your copy. 

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  • KnitPlanJess
    Mar 10, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    I needed a book to break me from a string of disappointing books and this one was it!

    Emma has a very stressful life and she doesn’t quite realize the impact that it’s having on her until she has to relive the same day… over. And over. And over. And over again. And every single time, her husband Dan dies at 10:17pm. It doesn’t matter what she does, he dies and she wakes up and relives the same day.

    This was an absolutely beautiful & heart wrenching story. I loved Emma’s growth in the book & how it felt SO real. This wasn’t her living the same day just a few times and waking up & realizing what needed to be done to fix it. This was a growth of over what was comparable to several months.

    The ending was hard for me to process but it was so perfect to the story. While I felt like I knew how it ended, I hated not having the 100% certainty.

    The story was captivating and never hit a dull or slow moment - right from the start I knew that this would be a book that I would absolutely love. And could see myself read again.

    Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

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