PINTEREST
BLOGLOVIN
GOODREADS
Published by Orion
Ebook and Paperback (18 April 2019)
288 pages
Source: Copy provided by publisher for review
About the Book
The rules are simple: choose the most significant moments from your relationship – one for each hour in the day.
You’d probably pick when you first met, right?
And the instant you knew for sure it was love?
Maybe even the time you watched the sunrise after your first night together?
But what about the car journey on the holiday where everything started to go wrong? Or your first proper fight?
Or that time you lied about where you’d been?
It’s a once in a lifetime chance to learn the truth.
But if you had to be completely honest with the one you love, would you still play?
For Esme and Tom, the game is about to begin. But once they start, there’s no going back . . .
Following Esme and Tom’s relationship over twenty-four individual hours of ups, downs and everything in between, Our Life in a Day is the most heartbreaking and moving love story you’ll read in 2019 – perfect for fans of Josie Silver’s One Day in December, Jojo Moyes, and Roxie Cooper’s The Day We Met.
My Thoughts
To celebrate their tenth anniversary, Tom and Esme are planning a mini break away but on the eve before they go, Esme presents Tom with a game – a stack of Post-its with a time noted on them and a drawing of a clock.
He has to pick the most significant moments from their relationship for each hour of a day, but over different years. This is how we see their relationship from his perspective from the moment he and Esme first met at a party in 2007.
Tom and Esme’s relationship wasn’t all hearts and flowers, they loved each other and had many happy times but each had their flaws and baggage and their relationship was complicated. Esme came across as being very bossy and wanting things on her terms whilst Tom seemed to be the more submissive one of the partnership and there were times when I wished he would stand up to Esme more.
There was one thing that Esme insisted on and that was total honesty. Tom however wasn’t always honest with her on a number of fronts – for his own reasons he felt that he couldn’t be, and this is where I found the story most powerful as it was a continuing thread as we follow this couple through the ups and downs of their relationship. Something in Tom’s past was hinted at from early on and although I wasn’t surprised when it was revealed, I was willing him to be upfront about it instead of things being left unsaid and causing misunderstandings and hurt.
It was Tom’s narrative that I found the most moving. It’s not often you get a male’s perspective on such deeply personal mental health issues and here his character was beautifully written.
Our Life in a Day is a brilliantly written debut with wonderfully developed characters that you can feel for. Even though I felt frustration and even annoyance at times towards both characters, I cared for both of them. It’s a powerful and emotional story and I loved it. And it made me cry.
My thanks to Tracy Fenton for the invitation to take part in the tour and to the publisher for providing a copy to review. My blog tour buddy today is Zoe from Zooloo’s Book Diary (click here)- do check out her review too.
About the Author
Jamie Fewery is an author, journalist and copywriter. He has written for the Daily Telegraph, Five Dials and Wired, and works for a London-based marketing and creative agency. He lives in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire with his wife and son. Our Life in a Day is his first novel.
Twitter |Amazon UK | Waterstones | Goodreads | Instagram
Made me cry too!
Not just me then!?