Interesting read about repeated loss and grief - one to stick with if you don't at first think you're going to be able to read it - you will in the end!

One book that's been on my Kindle for a long while was The First Time Lauren Pailing Died. The unusual plot intrigued and pulled me into reading this book. A young girl dies in a car crash while on holiday but she comes back to a slightly different version of her life where she has survived but her parents are slightly different and the world feels off kilter. But then she has another accident, and she wakes up in another version. Her life keeps shifting and changing. Moments and memories of her other lives start to bleed through with her father's colleague being missing in each version. This could be the key of her fractured, many lives. This really was an interesting experimental read and I really enjoyed the different versions of Lauren's life as well as looking back on how people coped after her death in her previous life. Very intriguing novel! Fans of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August will have love this book.


Thank you to NetGalley for sending me a copy.

I tried to describe the story of The First Time Lauren Pailing Died to my fiancé the other day and I made a right pig’s ear of it so I apologise if this fails to make sense. The First Time Lauren Pailing Died is the story of a girl who lives many strands of the same life. She is a young teenager in one, an adult in another and in another she is dead. Yes. The story seems to apply itself to the belief of parallel lives but with differences. See already I am veering off into the grey area where I begin to get confused.

With that confusion in mind The First Time Lauren Pailing Died did confuse me. That is nothing to do with the writing. Alyson Rudd managed to keep me engaged in spite of my confusion because her writing is very good. Personally, I have issues with Groundhog Day-esque storylines because my little brain cannot keep up. However, The First Time Lauren Pailing Died is very good and I implore you to give it a try.

The First Time Lauren Pailing Died by Alyson Rudd is available now.

For more information regarding Alyson Rudd (@allyrudd_times) please visit her Twitter page.

For more information regarding HQ (@HQDigitalUK) please visit www.hqstories.co.uk.

What a marvellous book this is. The plot is far fetched, slightly off the wall but always compulsive to follow. The narrative flits from one reality to another but I never found this confusing, as it was so cleverly written. I was sorry to reach the end and would definitely read more by Alyson Rudd.

I was really excited to read this, but struggled to keep returning to it. Mainly ebcacsue It felt like something that should eb read togetehr to stop you feeling like you'd forgotten something.
The premise of the book is good, and It starts really well, Lauren is a normal girl, avaerage life, until she becomes teenager and is in a fatal car accident. Thats whent he story ebcomes more intreguing and confusing.

This is a very different book which is quite intriguing in places. I felt it was almost like sliding doors - what happens when Lauren dies and what happens if she doesn't die!! Then it becomes more complicated with her dying at a later point but again as if her life took a different direction. A little confused but a good read nevertheless.
The result of her death on members of her family are equally interesting and often very sad which gave me pause for thought.
Three and a half stars for me!
Many thanks to Netgalley/Alyson Rudd/HQ for a digital copy of this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

I am in charge of our Senior School library and am looking for a diverse array of new books to furnish their shelves with and inspire our young people to read a wider and more diverse range of books as they move through the senior school. It is hard sometimes to find books that will grab the attention of young people as their time is short and we are competing against technology and online entertainments.
This was a thought-provoking and well-written read that will appeal to our readers across the board. It had a really strong voice and a compelling narrative that I think would capture their attention and draw them in. It kept me engrossed and I think that it's so important that the books that we purchase for both our young people and our staff are appealing to as broad a range of readers as possible - as well as providing them with something a little 'different' that they might not have come across in school libraries before.
This was a really enjoyable read and I will definitely be purchasing a copy for school so that our young people can enjoy it for themselves. A satisfying and well-crafted read that I keep thinking about long after closing its final page - and that definitely makes it a must-buy for me! Be great for our creative writing students to inspire their own writing

The First Time Lauren Pailing Died is an unusual and intriguing literary drama. The writer weaves a tale of several lives the characters could lead and questions whether there are other worlds alternate to our own. Bittersweet and heartstrings.

Well written book that held me from the first chapter A story of a young girl who sees visions of another life anf then they become her life. I loved it

Such an interesting book.

At first, I wondered if it may be confusing, but the characters are constant throughout the different lives and all quite different that it really wasn't a problem for me to follow.

I felt that there were a couple of things that the author could have done to make this up to a 5 star book for me. The fact that there were no cats and the President in the US being a woman in one of Lauren's lives really could have given the author scope to include more differences which could have been both interesting and amusing.

This is everything I want in a book - Loved it ! So cleverly written . It's quite difficult to explain the story without it sounding very weird! The first time Lauren died she is 13 .....Its a sliding doors type of story... I loved the different lives that lauren lived and the details were very clever. Had me hooked and I read it in 2 sittings wanting to know what happened next.
I loved that there was one certainty in each existence that Peter had vanished. Fab book and will be recommending it to everyone

It’s a phrase that gets used quite a lot, but I honestly don’t think I’ve read anything quite like this book before. The First The Lauren Pailing Died is a beautiful novel that explores the innermost corners of our psychology. As is hinted at in the title, early on in the story there is a tragic accident in which our protagonist Lauren dies. But things are not always as they appear on the surface in this book, and multiple stories begin to run in parallel, connected only by strange shards of light that pierce through Lauren’s reality and which seemingly only she can see.

This sort of idea can sometimes come across a bit serious and laboured – very clever but a bit too literary. This absolutely was not the case with this novel – instead these more theoretical elements balanced beautifully with very lyrical, readable and emotive story lines. Everything weaves together delicately to explore the different paths that small moments in our lives can lead us to – sometimes pivotal and sometimes mundane moments. Our lives made up of infinite alternate lives that could have been – the possibilities living within and running alongside each other. Rudd handles all of this expertly, and the result is a really readable and thought provoking book.

This is an impressive debut foray into fiction for Alyson Rudd with an emotional sensitivity that I really appreciated. It tells the story of Lauren Pailing, a seemingly normal young girl who happens to see glimpses of other lives through the 'sunbeams' that permeate her life. At 13, Lauren dies and then wakes up to live her life anew. What follows is a Sliding Doors-esque scenario in which we follow the lives of Lauren and her family and the ways in which they diverge. What I found really interesting was the focus of the narrative. Rudd has made this a study of character and a slice of life tale, rather than a speculative mind melter, which threw me off a little at first, but once I got engrossed in these characters and their lives, I enjoyed the experience immensely. The writing is clear and fluid and the pacing is good, albeit with a slight lag in the middle and a bit of a rushed conclusion. I thought the exploration of lives well lived and the way in which our connections to other people influence all aspects of our existence very intriguing and I thought that Rudd dealt with the scientific possibilities of the narrative astutely. Overall, I enjoyed this novel a lot once I took on board what the aim was and would recommend it to anyone that liked The Time Traveller's Wife.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

What a read and totally wasn’t what I expected, I was lost in the beginning a little bit but I still felt drawn to the story.
I haven’t read a book written like this for a while, I enjoyed it. The characters were believable and even I was convinced the all these lives had been lived.

Do you remember the first time you realise you could have just died? For me it’s probably when I’m around 8 and after a tantrum with my parents I escaped through the front door and ran across the road; and a car braked just in front of me. My first oh s*** moment. And in a quantum multiverse I wasn’t so lucky what would have happened if I wasn’t here to my family, my friends and so on? Alyson Rudd takes this idea and creates a compelling emotional tapestry of different timelines where people have to grapple with the consequences of life and death.

Lauren is a fairly typical kid in 70’s Cheshire; loves art; her family and friends and has just one strange ability. She on occasions sees ‘beams’ shimmering shafts of reflective matter that when she looks through them, she sees a different world; variations of people she knows – but as she grows up, she forgets this. Then on her first ever holiday away from home a traffic accident breaks her neck. In one universe this leaves her devastated parents Bob and Vera trying to piece their lives together; in another Lauren awakes in hospital and is disconcerted that she seems to have different memories. The book then covers multiple timelines - Lauren grows up to be an Art Student in 80’s London and finds love and a career; her father Bob in another universe suffers a second loss with the death of wife and has to find himself again and two further timelines develop as the story progresses. In some the US gets a right wing female president decades early; Mrs Thatcher never becomes PM and in another there are no such thing as cats but the key linking theme is every time Bob’s employer who was always a good friend to the family vanishes and Lauren always gets drawn to trying to solve this.

I really do like the concept and the way Rudd creates these alternate worlds. I definitely recognise these aspects of Cheshire and Merseyside plus the feel of the 80’s. the various versions of Lauren e all encounter manage to keep the ‘core’ of her character but also show the way different experiences shape her life. The scenes where various characters have to deal with the Loss of Lauren really hurt and capture that theme of grief and moving on (or not) that pull you into seeing what happens to the characters.

But I think I found it a curious mix of perhaps not fully exploring the concept and also breaking it. There is a whole section with Bob suffering the loss of Lauren and Vera that I found quite unsatisfying – partly as there is no reason for this concept of the universe splitting off and also it’s a very ‘middle class midlife crisis’ feel that I just don’t feel belongs to the main story. At the same time Lauren’s life only has a few life and death moments so we really seem to get a middle-class life versus a working-class motherhood. The focus on motherhood is quite a strong one in the novel and feels a bit limiting in terms of scope. The counterpoint of the constantly disappearing Peter Stanning is a sensible counterpoint, but the ultimate explanation never really works for me.

I will be fascinated to see how Rudd develops as an author as think their writing style and ideas are really standout but ultimately, I could not walk away fully satisfied with this novel. It’s always good to see a literary look at an SF trope but it feels like it’s playing safe when it could have gone full throttle.

This is such a fascinating novel that follows Lauren Pailing through multiple alternate lives. Each time she dies a new life begins for the people that loved her. So the further into the book you get the more strands of each version of Lauren’s life are being followed. It may sound complicated but it was actually really easy to follow each life as it quickly becomes clear where you are in each particular strand. In each of Lauren’s lives a man has disappeared and she is convinced that she needs to find him. In time versions of Lauren begin to have memories of a life she didn’t live but another version of her did and this is where the novel got really interesting for me, I loved the way the author explored how other versions of us might still be a part of us on some level. The novel explores themes of relationships, grief and parenting in such a sensitive way. This is such a stunning novel and one that has really stayed with me since I read it. I’m already excited to read whatever Alyson Rudd writes next!

Unfortunately this book was not for me. I enjoyed the premise of the book and the blurb and cover drew me in however the style took me a while to get in to and in the end I did not finish the book.

Thank you to netgalley for giving me an advanced reader copy.

Enjoyable alternative reality tale, made my head spin a little but overall very interesting and well written. I would probably read more by this author.

I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, HQ, and the author Alyson Rudd.
Undoubtedly an interesting concept for a novel, and I was entertained, but unfortunately I was left mostly with a feeling of confusion and of ambiguity.
The characters didn't feel fully formed, and the story's denouement felt a little underdeveloped.
Undoubtedly clever, but falls a little short of the mark. 3 stars.

This book was really interesting. It's really well thought out and keeps your interested throughout whilst intricately weaving together stories. The premise sounds as thought it could lose you but it really captures your attention.

4 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley and Alyson Rudd for my free copy in exchange for review.