Cover Image: Come Again

Come Again

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Member Reviews

Nine months after the unexpected death of her husband Luke, Kate Marsden has had enough. She's lost her job, ghosted her friends, become dependent on alcohol and started talking to the mouse that inhabits her squalid home. Kate is laid out by her grief and her memories and ready to be done. There's just the loose end of what to do with the video file that got her fired. Then she wakes up in her university bedroom, in her 18 year old body and realises that she has the chance to meet for the first time again and possibly save his life.

It's a funny, sprightly moving story that revels in its sillier aspects and has some profound things to say about grief and healing. Kate is a winning main character and it was refreshing to have a middle-aged woman with a working-class background with hobbies and skills that buck the gender stereotypes. The overt allyship of Webb occasionally veers into the patronising but overall I enjoyed his portrayal of Kate as a fully-rounded woman

The time travel aspect of the story is largely well-handled in part two, with Kate reassessing her youthful experiences with a very different eye the first time around, making for some wryly humorous interactions and observations. It fact, the first two parts of the story were excellent, well-written, well-paced and balancing comedy with sadness. The reason I give it 3 stars only, is part three which veers wildly into comedy action-thriller chase sequence which, while fun in its own right, didn't fit well with the rest, indeed, I'd be quite happy to see the weak and odd Russian oligarch storyline excised from the plot entirely. It is totally unnecessary. The resolution of Kate's time travelling meddling is ridiculous and does a disservice to the rest of the story, leaving me with an overall feeling of dissatisfaction. I can't help but feeling that a sweet, funny epilogue at the end of part two would have been a much more fitting ending.

P.S. A note to Mr Webb, just because you acknowledge that a joke is homophobic and problematic doesn't give you a free pass, it's easier and more decent not to use them at all

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Really enjoyed this read, as a long time fan of Robert Webb I had been looking forward to this for quite a while.
It was heartwarming, humorous and one I will surely come back to in the future.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

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I was initially attracted to this book as i'd heard comparisons to One Day and in some ways it is but in others it's very different.
The book is split into 3 parts, all of which are very different . For me, it started off a bit slow and wasn't a very happy read as it is dealing with grief however part 2 I loved! I loved the 90s University setting and took me right back to the era . I'm generally not a fan of time travel and struggled with the latter part as its just a bit too far from reality for my tastes but it is written well.
If youre after some make believe mixed with a love story then pick this one up!

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I greatly enjoyed this book, thank you for giving me a preview copy. The plot was interesting and fast paced and I sympathised with the characters. This is the first novel I have read by this author but I hope it will not be the last!

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Can you fall in love for the first time twice?
Kate and Luke fell in love on their first day of University 19 years ago. They've been married for the last ten. Except, Luke died suddenly, and Kate's left feeling alone and desperate. She decides to end it all, but instead she wakes up back in her 19 year old body in York University, 1992. She meets Luke again and tries to warn him about the tumour already growing in his brain that will one day suddenly kill him.
The first two thirds of Come Again were good, I enjoyed getting to know Kate and meeting her friends at University. I felt the first third was written in a really heartfelt way, and I felt very emotionally invested in Kate's grief.
The second part when we were in the past was again well written and the characters were developed.
Unfortunately, the last third really let the book down for me. Kate comes back to the present time and ends up in a high speed car chase. This just seemed really unnecessary, yes it did fit the plot but I felt the car chase was purely there as a plot device. There are so many other ways that a plot device could have been used to move the story on that would have fitted better with the existing book.
The final part that annoyed me was the response to the time travel. Kate went back in time, changed the past, and then came back to the unchanged timeline- this is absolutely fine if the time travel was a dream or something. However, she then discovers that things have changed in the present- she had managed to help Luke- but all her friends are also well aware that she'd a depressed widow who was married to Luke.... confused yet? I really didn't understand the ending. I think Webb suddenly realised that he had all these plot lines to tie up, but he just didn't quite manage to do it effectively in my opinion.
Overall, I gave Come Again 3*, its a nice feel good book, good for fans of the Time Travellers Wife or The Flat Share.
Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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Come Again is a fun, and humorous novel with a variety of themes, perhaps the most overarching one being grief/ loss. This sounds like it should be depressing, and there are defintely some parts which made me feel really emotional and a little sad, but it’s also uplifting and fun in other moments too.

Kate is a brilliant character and I instantly warmed to her, despite her having a very negative outlook on life at the start. But who can blame her – her husband of 28 years, Luke, has suddenly died and left her feeling bereft. Things suddenly kick up a gear, and we experience the story going forward in three parts.

We see Kate’s situation as it is now, as she is struggling with grief, and then in the second part we are transported back to the moment when Kate first met Luke, at university in the early 90s. She suddenly realises she might have the chance to change things – but how, without sounding absolutely mad? In the third part we are brought back to the present day, and see how the future may have been affected by her foray into the past.

Each section offers a slightly different feel, but all are really entertaining. I loved reading about Kate’s ‘second’ first meeting with Luke, and her time at uni, and though I found some of the last section a little confusing at times, I finished Come Again with a sad-but-also-happy smile on my face. I wanted things to be different on one hand, but on the other was glad it ended as it did.

Come Again is sweet, witty and poignant, and funny too – a great mix. It’s not necessarily a book to completely ‘escape’ into, as there’s a lot of serious themes in there, and parts where I felt myself feeling a bit teary, but it is still an easy and enjoyable read nevertheless. Kate is a character I would have happily read more of.

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I'm very fond of a time travelling novel and thought that the author, comedien Robert Webb would have a good go at it. I wasn't disappointed. It was very funny, very well written and completely adorable. I loved it.

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Have you ever wished you could go back to your first day of university and do it all again? Kate gets to do just that. She's lost the love of her life to a brain tumour, and she's in a bad way. Grief stricken, she loses her job, and loses her mind. And then she wakes up, 19 again, in 1992.
There are some hilarious set-pieces (you'll be mortified at the self-conscious desperation of a disparate bunch of youngsters, soon to become lifelong friends, as they desperately try to impress each other), on the back of a bittersweet plot. When you're in your mid forties, you've LIVED. You know stuff. You know stuff a 19 year old doesn't. Can you lose your ennui, your cynicism, your burnout, and become the girl your husband fell in love with? Maybe you've also got a different perspective on who's worth getting to know when you get to do it all again.
I really enjoyed this novel; it's mostly simply a joyous page-turner - and in the final chapters, a madcap cross London caper which is MADE for a film adaptation. But the underlying conceit gives it a poignancy than anyone looking back at their young selves will recognise. I'm not sure we would or could do it all again. Maybe it's better just to sprinkle fairy dust on the memories, and look around at where we are now, and be thankful for the good stuff.

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My review of this book can be found as part of my May Wrap Up on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/6rU96M3Idac

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Found it very hard to get into this book, and then the denouement of the plot just didn't make sense... It just felt a bit all over the place and failed to capture my attention and make me root for it

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Excellent read. It’s my very first book by Robert Webb that I’ve read.
Well written and great story.
Thank you to both NetGalley and publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book

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Thanks to Canongate and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

It is always going to be difficult to review a book written by such a well-known and beloved personality and especially someone who has recently published a really well received memoir. I really like Robert Webb, he’s terribly interesting and he makes me laugh a lot so I was excited to read this.

This book tells the Storey of Kate Marsden. Kate’s much-loved husband Luke has recently died unexpectedly, and we find her struggling to cope with the depth of her grief. She has shut herself off from her friends and has burned her bridges with her long-standing career.

This book is difficult to talk about without spoiling anything due to the very nature of the story. I’d rather write a vague plot summary than spoil anything for anyone reading it for the first time. That said, the blurb gives a fair amount of detail and without spoiling anything this tale of grief has the main character travelling back in time to the first day she met Luke.

I thought the parts of the story that covered Kate’s grief and the love that she shared with Luke were genuinely affecting and her depression and nihilism were captured perfectly. It also manages to be really rather funny though and ultimately this is really a book about second chances and the humour is what you would expect from a comedian of Webb’s talent.

My issues started when the time travelling aspect of the story was introduced. I felt that the timeline was rather shonky and I struggled to accept that anyone could experience the depth of feeling Kate and her friends seem to develop over the course of just one afternoon and evening. Perhaps it would have been more believable had the time travel aspect taken place over a period of time but I just couldn’t accept that anyone could become so close to a group of individuals in such a short period of time, especially since Kate was actually a total cow to some of them. Kate’s character in the past dodged dangerously close to Mary Sue territory at times which was a bit strange as she wasn’t really nice to anyone at all. In a way the time travel aspect almost seemed more believable than the relationships. There was just far too much packed in and I didn’t understand why the timeline wasn’t stretched out further.

For me the story completely lost the plot in the final section. It went from being a touching story about love and friendship to this rather bizarre action adventure. Again, it's not really possible for me to go into this without spoiling things but it as a reader it just jarred a lot. The mental gymnastics required to understand the ending were also beyond me i'm afraid.

Overall, I did enjoy reading this but I didn’t enjoy reading it as much as I had hoped. Perhaps I would have preferred some angsty navel gazing and that is on me, but it wasn’t what I had hoped for.

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Robert Webb’s second book is a very amusing read and a very clever concept, which I very much enjoyed.
Kate is absolutely devastated, her life is falling apart after her husband, Luke, has died. Kate and Luke were together for 28 years since they met during the first week of university.
Luke died suddenly, but could he have been saved if his condition had been detected sooner?
Kate falls asleep one night and when she wakes up, she is not in her usual bed, but in the one which she stayed in when she was at university. She finds she is back in freshers week. Will she fall in love again with Luke? Will she be able to save him? Will things be the same? Will their lives work out differently?
Such a good read. Really amusing and great characters. Great concept for middle aged woman to go back to view younger self and an opportunity to have another chance to live life again.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for a Kindle copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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I've always loved Robert Webb's comedy and this didn't disappoint. It reminded me of Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls in its embrace of nostalgia, its bitter-sweet memory, the rush of first love. It's a great summery song of a book!

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For anyone that has ever experienced grief and struggled to express it, this book is for you. It is just wonderful, it made me cry and smile. A beautiful storyline but one with dark twists also made me want to read more.

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"Well, the first time it was charming because she was in love. And being in love is when you truly live in the present: when every moment is a discovery, every tiny detail is pregnant with meaning. Grief though... grief is the opposite of meaning; grief is where the present can't breathe; where the past is everywhere you look; where every new moment is dead on arrival. Grief is Groundhog Day."

When her husband Luke dies unexpectedly from an undiscovered brain tumour, Kate is consumed by grief. In a spiral of depression, she loses her job and pushes away her family and friends. She decides that she's going to end it all. But first she has a nap... and wakes up in 1992 as a new arrival at the University of York. Freshers Week is when she meets Luke - can she do everything the same, meet her future husband and save his life at the same time? Come Again is an exploration of grief, and despite this topic, it is very funny (though this is no surprise when the author is comedian Robert Webb). This is Webb's first fiction book after publishing his autobiography How Not To Be A Boy a few years ago.

I enjoyed reading this, it's a well written page turner. The Back to the Future-esque time travel and 90s nostalgia was my favourite bit - I was excited to see where it would go, as these time travel plot devices never work out how the protagonist wants them to. The only thing that let me down for this book was the third part, once Kate wakes up and finds herself back in the present. The subplot of spies, Russians and deep fakes just didn't quite gel with the rest of the story for me. Apart from that, it's a very entertaining read. I would still recommend it.

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Having been moved and amused by his amazing memoir, How Not To Be A Boy, I was keen to read this new book from Robert Webb – his first foray into fiction. I consumed most of his memoir with his voice from Peep Show in my head (which was funny considering I’m not a fan of the show – it makes me hella anxious), so I was surprised when this didn’t happen here.

Instead, I discovered that Webb really knows how to write. Even better, he knows how to write great female characters, with the protagonist Kate leaping off the page as a genuinely complex human who just happens to also be female. Even though we meet her at her lowest moment, I found myself genuinely liking and respecting Kate, which in turn made me like and respect Webb even more.

I also really enjoyed the fact that even though the premise felt a little derivative, the story took me to places that I definitely wasn’t expecting. It said a lot to me about how much we idolise lost loves and how hard it is to move on while we are under that spell.

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Warning, this book causes explosive laughter, It will even override the depressing mood of a Coronews Conference. This will however incur dirty looks from your spouse.
I wasn't sure what type of story to expect. From the reviews it could have a been an exploration of feelings, a spy thriller, or anything in between. when you read the book, you'll find that genre is no longer important, as the story follows an engrossing path to an all-too-soon end.
Hoping Mr. Webb is using lockdown to write another novel already.

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I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's not at all what I expected! If you like One Day with a bit of Quantum Leap and a dash of James Bond thrown in, then you'll love it. Kate's husband Luke has died and she's a mess. Jut as she's going to end it all, she wakes up in the body of her 18 year old self-on the day she meets Luke. Kate knows he's already ill so sets out to save his life. But it's not going to be that easy. I liked Kate; she felt real and I liked how she kept messing things up. The pages flew by on account of the writing style and the witty dialogue. I did not see the end coming and I might have had a lump in my throat on one occasion! Fab.

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Great idea, and I thought he captured the female voice well, while the 90s setting was excellent. I found the plot a little predictable but it was still very entertaining.

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