Book Review: Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Maybe in Another Life
Author:  Taylor Jenkins Reid
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Australia
Pages: 333 pages

 

At the age of twenty-nine, Hannah Martin still has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She has lived in six different cities and has held countless meaningless jobs since college, but on the heels of a disastrous breakup, she has finally returned to her hometown of Los Angeles. To celebrate her first night back, her best friend, Gabby, takes Hannah out to a bar- where she bumps into her high school boyfriend, Ethan.

It's just past midnight when Gabby asks Hannah is she's ready to go. Ethan quickly offers to give her a ride later if she wants to stay.

Hannah hesitates.

What happens if she leaves with Gabby?

What happens if she leaves with Ethan?

In concurrent storylines, Hannah lives out the effects of each decision. Quickly, these parallel universes develop into surprisingly different stories with far-reaching consequences for Hannah and the people around her, raising questions including: Is anything meant to be? How much in our lives is determined by chance? And perhaps most compelling: Is there such a thing as a soul mate?

Hannah believes there is. And in both worlds, she believes she's found him.

My Review

Thoughts on the book: A TINY LITTLE SPOILER

 Maybe in Another Life is a fantastically written book which brings forth an interesting thought about all the choices we make in life and the fact that maybe in another universe we are actually living the flip side of those choices out. I hadn't really thought too much about this concept before, but upon reading about it in the story it has made me actually think about it a lot. What if there is another universe out there where we are living the life of the other side of the choices we have made. Maybe in another life I never picked up a book and fell in love with reading (shocking I know) or maybe I never broke up with my high school boyfriend and we got married. These are kind of the type of things that are discussed in the book. However we also learn that sometimes what happens in one universe will also happen in the other universe as that was just how your life was meant to play out, well maybe with a few different details but ending up with the same outcome.

The main character Hannah Martin was a very strong character, no matter what was thrown at her she worked her way through it and made the best out of the situation. Once she set her mind to something that was nearly it, you couldn't change her mind.  I also thoroughly enjoyed her best friend Gabby and couldn't believe what ended up happening to her in both universes half way through. But like Hannah she is a very strong woman and turns her life around for the better. I loved the two main love interests that the main character Hannah had. I couldn't decide which one I loved more and was happy with which ever ending she ended up with. They both proved themselves to be worthy of her.

Favourite quote/passage: My favourite quote is a bit long but I fell in love with it as soon as I read it and found it really interesting and it really made me think about the idea that is was portraying.

"And I was reading about different theories about the universe. I was really taken with this one theory that states that everything that is possible happens. That means when you flip a quarter, it doesn't come down heads or tails. It comes up heads and tails. Every time you flip a coin and it comes up heads, you are merely in the universe where the coin came up heads. There is another version of you out there, created the second the quarter flipped, who saw it come up tails. This is happening every second of every day. The world is splitting further and further into an infinite number of parallel universes where everything that could happen is happening. This is completely plausible, by the way. It's a legitimate interpretation of quantum mechanics. It's entirely possible that every time we make a decision, there is a version of us out there somewhere who made a different choice. An infinite number of versions of ourselves are living out the consequences of every single possibility in our lives. What I'm getting at here is that I know there may be universes out there where I made different choices that led me somewhere else, led me to someone else."

He looks at Gabby. "And my heart breaks for every single version of me that didn't end up with you."

Rating: 4/5