Review: Cassandra in Reverse

Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cassandra Dankworth is a woman of structure and routine. The same thing for breakfast every day, the same lunch at the same time every day, a place for everything and everything in its place. But she struggles to understand social interactions, like how long to look someone in the eye before it becomes creepy, or sarcasm.

In a cataclysm of disaster Cassandra manages to get dumped by her boyfriend, fired from her PR job, and her favourite café has no banana muffins. Overwhelmed by the events of the day, and by being swept up in a protest march, Cassandra accidentally travels back in time. At first she doesn't realise what has happened and thinks her boyfriend Will has had second thoughts, or perhaps she misunderstood his intentions.

Soon Cassandra discovers she can travel back in time but no longer than a few months earlier, certainly not long enough to save her parents from dying in a car crash a decade ago. so she uses the time to curate her relationship with Will, trying to fix whatever it was she did to make him break up with her. Time after time she relives brief moments trying over and over again to say the right words do the right thing.

So far, so standard romantic time-travel comedy right? Wrong. Cassandra is obsessed by the Greek and Roman gods, practically everything is likened to an ancient myth. She also 'sees' emotions as colours, unfortunately colours mean different things in different circumstances and with different people, so she can't just see a fuchsia emotion and go 'ah, he's irritated'. Her narrative reminded me very much of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, she takes things literally, she doesn't understand other people, she has to 'translate' their words and actions to try to decrypt a language she doesn't understand.

Not a romance, not a time travel novel, I'm not sure how to categorise this, other than very quirky!

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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