Review: For Twice in My Life

Does anyone else have a sort of rule for the authors you read who were good but not great? Do you always give them one more chance? Are you more likely to give them a chance if they’re, say, Canadian like you, or if the description sounds just too good to pass up? I didn’t love Annette Christie’s The Rehearsals (review here) but I enjoyed it enough so when I had the chance to review For Twice in My Life, I thought, sure! Why not? Ultimately it was another just ok book but it kept me interested enough to feel good about seeing it through to the end.

Here’s the book’s description:

Can one little lie lead to a big second chance?
Layla's chaotic life transformed when she met Ian Barnett. Ambitious, committed, and thoughtful, Ian has been everything she'd dreamed of, and she knows he'd say the same of her. So when he breaks up with her out of the blue, Layla is stunned. What went wrong?
But then, Layla gets a call from the local hospital. Ian's had a biking accident. He's okay, but he needs someone--his someone--to get him home safely. As it becomes clear Ian doesn't remember he ended things, it also becomes clear that the accident has given him a new outlook on life . . . and Layla a second chance to get things right.
That is, until Ian's younger brother comes to town. Matt is restless, unpredictable, and threatens to upset the careful balance Layla and Ian have rebuilt. As things get more complicated both at home and at work, Layla realizes she might lose her chance at real love--and real happiness--if she doesn't come clean about the stories she's been telling: to Ian, to Matt, to her family, and most importantly, to herself.

I’m not particularly drawn to amnesia plots and I really don’t like when the reader knows that the main character is lying to the other so this novel and I got off on the wrong foot. It had to work hard for me to get over how Layla was behaving and I was able to sort of-kind of get past it. Mostly because I felt that Ian hadn’t had a good reason for breaking up with her and I felt Layla deserved an answer. I wasn’t sure if she (or I, for that matter) was going to get that answer but I was willing to put in the work to find out.

The tension between Layla and Matt (and Ian) was…intense. There was a ton of angst and anger between them and it was hard to figure out why. Matt and Ian didn’t have a great relationship so Layla wasn’t open to seeing Matt in the best light, which, honestly, was kind of annoying. She should have given him a fairer chance to be a friend and a brother. And then she shouldn’t have fought the attraction the two of them had so hard. I get that that’s incredibly awkward but let’s perhaps take a look at your life and realize where you’re happiest and with whom, shall we?

I didn’t love compulsive shopping as a coping mechanism with Confessions of a Shopaholic and I didn’t like it with Layla, especially when right off the bat there’s a hint that she had some serious financial troubles. That storyline felt like it took forever to fully be revealed and I just didn’t buy how self-sabotaging Layla was being. Her mom finally sets her right at the end of the book but my heart was kind of breaking that Layla constantly felt like she was a screw up and that she had to change herself to fit into the world around her. Sure, we all battle with confidence sometimes, some people more than others, but it was hard to read about someone who just clearly couldn't see that she has far more worth than she thinks.

Annette Christie writes really emotional stories full of characters who aren’t perfect. For Twice in My Life, the characters were real and, quite honestly, a bit of a mess, but their emotions (and boy, were there a lot of emotions) were so strong and that really came through the pages. I wanted to really like this one and am bummed that I found it only ok but I’ll keep an eye on what Christie writes next. Maybe I’ll have to give her just one more chance.

*An egalley and a finished copy of this novel were provided by the Canadian distributor, HBG Canada, in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*