Review: One Last Chance

One Last Chance by Sarah Jost
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lou is a Swiss national who moved to London to teach after her boyfriend broke up with her. Nothing seems to be going right for Lou, she's single, her flatmate has moved in with another (better) friend, she can't control her class at school, her ex has just announced his engagement, and she's increasingly estranged from her younger sister Marion who is caring for their mother.

We first meet Lou as she accompanies her former flatmate to the funeral of Nick, someone Lou barely knew, having met him only once two years earlier at her flatmate's birthday. Feeling uncomfortable at being at a funeral for close friends and family only, Lou makes a series of awkward faux pas, which culminate in her passing out. But when she comes to, it is two years earlier and she is about to enter the pub for her ex flatmate's birthday drinks. At first Lou isn't aware that she has travelled back in time, but each time she returns things change, both because of Lou's agency and because of other people's actions. One constant in every time hop is that it ends with Nick's funeral.

I found this difficult to get into at first but by the end I loved it and I really couldn't tell how it would end. Initially I thought it was because the author is herself a Swiss national and I imagined that her phraseology was slightly off to a native English-speaker. However, I now realise that it was also partially to demonstrate Lou's social awkwardness, her lack of confidence which too often came across as indifference or self-absorption. In each time hop Lou learns more about her friends and family, about herself, about the way people can hide their feelings and insecurities in different ways, about love, and about heart-breaking loss.

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

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