Review: Once Upon a Leap Year

Once Upon a Leap Year by Anna Bell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lucy is a Leapling, someone born on 29 February. On a birthday day trip booze cruise to France in 2020 organised by her clueless boyfriend she meets another Leapling, Noah. The two of them spend the day wandering around Calais and nearly miss the coach back to the ferry. The two of them have an instant rapport, despite Noah being a hopeless romantic and Lucy being what she calls a realist. Over time, both being at the same university, Noah and Lucy develop a great friendship, something Lucy doesn't want to spoil with romance which might get awkward.

Over the next twenty years we see Lucy and Noah and their friends evolve and encounter all of life's experiences like marriage, childbirth, illness, divorce, but the timing is never right and Lucy begins to wonder, was she right to keep Noah at arm's length and has she missed out on what the wider world had to offer her?

I have read and thoroughly enjoyed a couple of books by Anna Bell previously so I was keen to read this, but unfortunately something didn't really work for me, it felt too similar to something I had read/seen before and didn't have anything new to say - other than the fact that Noah and Lucy shared the same birthday.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

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