Recently I have read a couple books with the time traveling theme. This book had similarities to The Two Lives of Lydia Bird so I would recommend this book if you enjoyed it. Ericia finds the ability to travel to and observe “the road not taken”. Due to a tragedy in her life she decides to use her ability and attempt to find happiness. The book was not predictable and I do recommend that if you start this book to read it all the way to the end.

Honestly i really tried to love this book, but I just couldn’t get into the writing. I guess I didn't found interesting the story or the characters. 
I did finish the book but it fell flat with me, so it's just not for me 🤷

Thank you to the publisher and the NetGalley for the opportunity to try something different.

Erica has an unusual ability. She can travel through time where she is able to live a completely different life. 

Dealing with love and loss along the way.  This reminded me of the tv show “Goodnight Sweetheart”.

okay first of all i love this cover something fierce. it's soo good. the book inside is just as good and cute and adorable. thanks

I really tried to love this book, but I just couldn’t get into the writing. I ended up DNFing about 20% in.

I really enjoyed this book. I found it well written and the time travel aspect really appealed. 

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.

Hated everyone. The main characters had no chemistry. People getting lost in grief and "escaping" is not relatable to me. Pick yourself up and deal with it.

I think that this book was a really miss for me, it was forgettable and uninteresting. I decided to DNF at 30% because I was bored and struggled to even read a page I had to keep reading the sentence over and over and I just had to come to the realization that it wasn’t for me:

I had really high hopes for this book given the examples to Josie Silver, but really feel like it fell flat. I never fully understood Erica’s time slipping abilities and found Erica to be dull and not that great of a laid.

I absolutely adored this book even with it's unbelievable storyline.
The focus of this book is Erica, a young woman who at the age of 12 found that she could time travel and also visit herself in a parallel lifetime, although this is out of her control and somewhat unwanted. When Erica is unceremoniously 'dumped' by Mike at a party she is rescued by Daniel and their romance unfolds.  Moving to Blackpool, marrying Daniel and giving birth to their son, Joshua, they have the idyllic life. However following a tragedy in their lives Erica sets out to visit her parallel self in an effort to make everything right. Does parallel Erica really live the life that this Erica wants, and can she find Daniel in the other universe and make him fall in love with her all over again.
A fantastic read!! Loved everything about this book.
Thanks for allowing me to read!

Beautifully poignant story which goes deeper than your average romance to discover if they life you chose really is the best it could be. If you could visit another version of you, loving another version of your life....would you stay there?

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. I liked the fact that two different worlds collide and come together.  Throughout the novel there some questions which all will ask and wonder the answers too! Thanks for the copy to review

Thank you to Net Galley and Harper-Collins UK for providing me with this ARC.

Admittedly, the first half of the book seemed to drag and I had a hard time giving it my full attention, but once I got into Erica and Daniel’s story, I was intrigued. 

This book is about Erica, a woman with the unusual ability to time travel to an alternate world where she lives a completely different life.  She has no control over this “Gift’” which comes and goes as it pleases. She can be gone for minutes, hours, or days at a time. 
Then, she meets Daniel, they fall in love, get married and they have a son, Joshua,  TRIGGER WARNING; Joshua tragically dies when he’s six months old.  

Daniel and Erica are swamped with grief, and, in desperation, Erica gets the idea that slipping into her alternate existence and meeting Daniel again would mean they could start over and forget about their devastating loss.  

It’s not something I’d normally read, and if you’re looking for your typical rom-com, this is not it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book. 

Erica never lets anyone in too close, a result of a weird phenomena that has her dropping into other times. When she meets Daniel at a party though, that changes. She shares her secret and they begin to build a life. When a tragedy occurs her will to fight the pull of leaving falters, and she has to decide whether to stay in the life she has, with all the pain, or fly away to her other self, and the unknown. 

i felt the premise was interesting, and the writing kept me involved. I wish Erica had been more proactive about finding out why she had this ability, and how to better control it. That part of the story wasn't explored at all. I also wish there was a little more character development Other than that, a decent book that I would definitely read again.

I received this ARC via Netgalley and was under the impression that this would be a standard contemporary romance; it's not.
It's unusual, heartbreaking, and beautiful.
I tend to reach for these cartoon cover romances when I need a light-hearted escape, but you shouldn't make that mistake. You should read this book understanding that it is about loss and grief, but most of all love. THE START OF US deserves an infant loss trigger warning.
I requested an ARC based on the unusual premise, that Erica can slip through worlds and maybe fix her relationship. She compares her life and choices to these alternate versions of herself struggling with what might have been and how she could prevent it. While Erica's story will break your heart, it will put it back together. I wasn't expecting to love this book as much as I did.

Wow this is one of the most unusual books I have read in awhile.  The idea of someone time traveling back and forth between two worlds really intrigued me and I was excited to go on Ericas journey.  At times she seemed a bit dull but overall I enjoyed learning her story.  I will warn you that some parts of this story are extremely sad and there was a point I wasn’t sure if I wanted to finish.  However I urge you to read to the end because it is very intriguing and I enjoyed how the author concluded this story.  I do wish we learned why Erica was able to travel through time but overall the plot was good and the story moved quickly.  I give this book four out of five stars.  Thank you to netgalley and publisher for the early read.

This is one of the most unusual books I've read in a while. Recommended for Josie Silver fans I took a gamble and dived in.
Erica is special because she has a whopping secret that hardly anyone knows, she can and does travel through time. In an instant she can go to a different time in her or families lives and see what happened in the east. She can also go onto the future.
So when she gets dumped by her boyfriend in steps Danny who is like no-one she's known before. She had made plans following the dumping to be brave and go back packing but now she's met Danny she's not so sure.
This was so well written and I really enjoyed it. As the story unfolds there is such a realness to the characters you find yourself willing everything to be ok. But the story is real and like life there are lots of highs and a very very low episode. So the book deals with grief and loss. 
As Erica can time travel she has to make a decision does she stay or go back in time to alter her life's time line. What would you do if you got the chance?
This is a charming story and definitely one to get lost in. Thank you for the advanced copy Netgalley.

In this book we meet Erica who has a huge secret, she can travel through time and see flashes of memories of events that happened around her life and her family as well as the future too. After her ex dumps her at a party she meets and falls for kind, caring Danny, unlike her ex he makes her feel like she's properly in love.

Only as she plans to travel and he gets offered a job abroad, their lives swerve away from each other, can they make it work? As they progress on they experience heartache, love, loss and ultimately, Erica has a decision to make, stay in this true-life or travel into her other life and never appear to Danny again.

In a Goodnight Sweetheart-Esque style book, this was an emotional story and very moving touching on some tough subjects such as family, death and the point of living even. But for all the seriousness, there's a beautiful true love story that shows as Erica ultimately does follow her heart's desire. One not to miss giving a read!

In this book we meet Erica who has a huge secret, she can travel through time and see flashes of memories of events that happened around her life and her family as well as the future too.



After her ex dumps her at a party she meets and falls for kind, caring Danny unlike her ex he makes her feel like she's properly in love.



Only as she plans to travel and he gets offered a job abroad, their lives swerve away from each other, can they make it work?



As they progress on they experience heart ache, love, loss and ultimately, Erica has a decision to make, stay in this true life or travel into her other life and never appear to Danny again.



In a Goodnight Sweetheart-esque style book, this was an emotional story and very moving touching on some tough subjects such as family, death and the point of living even. But for all the seriousness, there's a beautiful true love story that shows as Erica ultimately does follow her heart's desire. One not to miss giving a read!



Many thanks to the publishers for allowing me to review this book for them!

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of The Start of Us.

I'm not a fan of chick lit but I'm interested when the premise catches my eye so I was excited when my request was approved.

I was looking for a story similar to The Time Traveler's Wife, which was great, but The Start of Us was more about a woman desperate not to be alone and find a man to be with.

From the start, I couldn't stand Erica. She's dull, she's not adventurous or ambitious. 

Her ability to time travel is never fully explained, and when she does travel, its nothing exciting, just watching herself with another (yup!) man and what that life might lead to.

I have no idea why she and Daniel are together. They have no rapport or chemistry to tell me otherwise. He's a nice guy but also one dimensional.

The last half of the book deals with grief and sorrow, and surviving an unimaginable loss. 

Erica spends most of the time wishing for a new life to escape her grief, seeking comfort in the multi-verse to escape her grief, which is understandable but also awfully selfish. It doesn't help that I don't like her.

The ending is predictably happily ever after, after a not surprising revelation when Erica wonders if she had taken another path to find Daniel, would they have still met?

I didn't like The Start of Us, but others might.