I love a good book and this is what I consider a good book! I loved how the author drew me in and didn't let go until the end. The writing was exquisite and I was lost in the book. A definite 5 star review!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of the book for my honest opinion.

Hmm. I was not the right audience for this book. It has a lot going on and for me it was a matter of some elements working better than others and being confused a large amount of the time with very little pay off in the end.

It's not poorly written, but I was pretty unsatisfied with it and didn't care for or understand most of the characters.

As 2015 begins, Abigail Willard is living an enviable life. She’s the art director at a major pharmaceutical company, her husband Dennis has a successful career and is a loving partner, and her two teenage sons are happy and healthy. It’s not the life she envisioned when she first arrived in New York City twenty-four years ago with her newly minted Master’s degree from the Rhode Island School of Design, though. She was an up-and-coming artist with a bright future, until a tragedy derailed her plans.
She’d thought she’d moved on, made a satisfactory life for herself, but lately she’d been having vivid, disturbing dreams that seemed almost like memories. Then one rainy night she saw herself. Or rather, she saw the young woman she’d been in 1991. She tries to brush it off as a coincidence, a temporary mental glitch, but their paths kept crossing and she realizes she’s either losing her mind or is experiencing extraordinary flashbacks. Life as she knows it is changed forever.
You Again is a brilliant, haunting psychological novel that will leave the reader questioning reality and the structure of time itself. Highly recommended

o sorry to admit but this book didn’t work for me! I tried so hard to connect with the protagonist, aching and caring for the situations she gets herself into. Believe me I did my best to empathize with her from the beginning to enjoy the creative plot line but eventually I gave up!
Of course this is my opinion and this could be considered as unpopular one.

Consider the possibility of seeing a younger version of yourself in familiar places and on regular days. It's going to be terrifying and unsettling. In this situation, Abby does not inform her husband or friends about her deteriorating mental and physical health. She consults with her ex-psychologist but says nothing. She instead works, ruminates, and unravels, scouring the city and her past. So she abandoned her promising painting career in exchange for a corporate job, health insurance, and domesticity. Is this a strange manifestation of her unfulfilled dreams, or is it something psychologically worse and more serious? The intriguing premise of the novel is never fully realized. The idea triumphs over the story. The concept is intriguing, and the writing is excellent, but I never felt emotionally invested in any of the characters or their fates. There's a lot to unpack in this novel. It's a big project, but it doesn't go deep enough into physics, identity, memory, trauma, regret, and recovery. What could have been a disturbing and complex psychological drama is instead a collection of photographs from a woman's disorganized life.

I kept trying to get into this book. it was just OK for me. I read about 30% of it before I just no longer was interested in it. i usually try to give a book a full chance, but this one didnt work out.

What a great novel. I loved being immersed in this book, as I was with Immergut's previous novel. I loved reading this and found that in particular Immergut's form and style worked well here, the voice pervasive and brilliant, and I cannot wait to recommend this to others as well as see what she comes out with next. What a brilliant book!

Abby Willard sees her 22 year old self on the street, she's sure of it. The only thing is, Abby's 46. And married. With two children. And a corporate job. Did Abby really see herself? Or is it just compound stress from motherhood and working full time?

Reading the description of this book, I thought I was in for a thriller. That, my dear readers, was not the case. Though there's a mystery abound, and some ominous possibilities afoot - the disjointed storytelling makes it a little difficult to stick with the rollercoaster that's happening in the protagonist's life.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ecco for advanced access to this title!

The premise sounds interesting but I didn't end up finishing it. It was simultaneously tired and confusing. I was rather disappointed and it got good buzz.

DNF. I tried to like this book - really tried. But it was too disjointed, and I gave up. Not making enough sense to me. There are too many good books out there to spend time on something that just doesn’t do it for me...

I was provided an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I did however listen to the final version of the audiobook. All opinions are my own.

This is marketed as general and literary fiction but it definitely has a thriller vibe to it. I do think the premise of this book is really interesting, and you aren't really sure if what is happening is real or if a sci-fi event taking place or if the main character is having some sort of mid-life crisis. That is where the thriller feeling comes from, you aren't sure if what what is happening between Abby and the mysterious appearances of "A" are really happening or if it is all in her head. Pairing these sightings of her younger self aka A, with her son getting in trouble and joining an anti-fascist group, her marriage falling apart, and other things in her life spiraling out of control. Abby continues to see her younger self and tries to warn her of events of the past so A can make different decisions, in turn A prods her to look at herself and asks if she is still making the art she once loved and examine her own happiness. Both versions are forces to reflect on what is going on in their lives and Abby reflects on things in her past.

As a reflection of life in general and the decisions we make, the sacrifices we make and the things we may give up as we get older I think this hits the mark pretty well. We all grow distant from friends and relationships evolve as we get older and may give up hobbies we were once passionate about because life gets in the way due to work or growing families. Like Abby not everyone ends up as the brilliant, successful painter (or whatever your dream career is/was) because they need a steady income to pay the bills but hopefully we can work the things we are passionate into our lives to find fulfillment.

Overall, I didn't like the disjointed nature of the book. It is told mainly from Abby's perspective, but also has some mixed media entries from a physicist, the therapist she sees, and the neurologist Abby ends up seeing toward the end of the book. The timeline is kind of all over the place which I found confusing. Perhaps had I read the print book versus listening to the audiobook I would have been able to reference the dates associated with the entries and would have been able to keep the timeline straight. Personally I'm not a fan of non-linear timelines, especially with so many perspectives. I found it confusing and hard follow at times which took away from my enjoyment of the book.

Wow! This was a rather confusing book but still quite interesting. No matter how confused I got I still kept reading. I still feel like I don't know what happened.

I was disappointed by this book and it didn’t keep my attention very well. The characters were a little hard to follow and after finishing I’m not quite sure what the point was.

I appreciate having had an opportunity to read and review this book. The appeal of this particular book was not evident to me, and if I cannot file a generally positive review I prefer simply to advise the publisher to that effect and file no review at all.

I read the first couple chapters of this book and just couldn't get into it. I found the writing confusing and the story line underwhelming. At first I thought it would be imaginative and engaging, but not so much....

46 year old Abby is haunted by her 22 year old self. She keeps seeing her everywhere, and then her life starts taking a downward turn.

I had high hopes for this book but this one was not for me. I didn’t connect with any of it. I didn’t connect with Abby and found the whole thing hard going.

Thank you to Harper Collins Publishers for this AdVanced copy.

I really tried to finish “You Again” but ultimately, it just was not for me. I found the characters hard to connect with. The story itself is intriguing at first glance but I really found the pacing to be a bit off.

I've seen this book categorized as a thriller or mystery, but I don't think I'd categorize it that way. It's lit fic with a bit of science fiction and mystery around the edges, maybe.

The premise of the book was irresistible to me. I mourn my younger self a bit. She was so thin! She was so passionate! She could eat whatever she wanted! She had such confidence in herself! None of those things feel as true for me in middle age anymore. I know that middle- aged women are supposed to know themselves and not care what anyone thinks of them and be bad-ass give-no-fucks kicking-ass-and-taking-names goddesses, but I still feel like I couldn't describe myself to a stranger and sadly I still do care what people think of me, which means that middle-aged metabolism is a constant annoyance.

The first scene, where Abby sees herself- what would I have seen if I saw my 90's self from afar? Well, I was probably wearing an ankh necklace and lots of silver finger rings. My hair was darker, and possibly a lot shorter, depending on when in the 90's it was. Boot cut jeans and lacy tight shirts, 100 pounds soaking wet. Throwing myself into exciting and unhealthy relationships, just asking to get hurt. I think it might break my heart to see that youth all over again, and it certainly threw Abby for a loop.

I wanted the book to hold onto that feeling. Abby is a commercial artist who has gone respectable although she once was ready to take the world by storm with her art. Abby now has two teenage sons and a husband. She doesn't want to see her younger idealistic self- young Abby is all possibility and current Abby is settled, in every way.

I kept waiting, but young and older Abby never really had a good conversation. Neither of them really wanted to be around the other one- young Abbey couldn't stand the middle aged bourgeoisie that was her future and older Abbey couldn't stand the mistakes that her younger self was about to make. It was constantly frustrating.

And there was a lot of other stuff in the book that felt like it diminished the central idea. Abby's older son is involved with antifa somehow; Abby starts getting involved too. There's a detective, an affair or two, a head injury? The end of the book ends up losing focus on what I wanted to see and kind of went all over the place. I ended up skimming to find the parts I wanted, which didn't help in the end.

The author actually tried to provide an explanation of Abby's ability to peer through time, and it lessened the whole idea, I thought. While the writing itself was enjoyable, the book felt a lot like some old relationships of mine- there was potential there, but ultimately that potential never materialized.

Imagine seeing a younger version of yourself on the streets of New York City. You know this girl. She is the young woman you were over 20 years ago - a beautiful, hopeful girl with her whole life ahead of her. But what do you do when you continue to see this ingenue version of yourself around the city. A girl on the cusp of making the same mistakes you, yourself once did many years earlier? Can you stop her before it is too late?

This Twilight Zone-esque premise is the subject of Debra Jo Immergut's new novel You Again, a piece of literary fiction sure to grasp you in the claws of suspense. You Again follows Abigail Willard, a once promising artist, as she navigates middle age - dodging bullets in her marriage and trying to steer her teenage sons down the right path - all while mysteriously seeing her younger self around town.

You Again had me hooked from the very first sentence. Being a huge fan of the Twilight Zone, the start of this novel gave me major "Spur of the Moment" vibes - an episode where a dissatisfied woman spots her younger self and tries to change the course of her future. The anticipation of this plot line kept me turning the pages; however, I did find myself losing interest as the novel plodded on down different paths. Nonetheless, the book wasn't unenjoyable - just a bit unfocused and confusing at times. What works well here is the hint of mystery and intrigue lurking around the edges, and the fact that you truly do not know what is going on in this story until the very end. Immergut unravels the layers of this plot slowly, pulling you in and allowing you to make your own assumptions about this dark and disturbing tale.

Recommended to readers who enjoy literary novels with a noir vibe!

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This book has an engaging premise, but it turned out to be more work than I wanted. The story is told by interspersing narratives with emails and notes, and plays with the consequences of roads not taken. Right now, I'm more interested in reading for escape and fun, and this book was too much of challenge for me.