Hey there! Before we begin, I want to mention that this book discusses the loss of an infant, which could be triggering for some readers.

What captured my interest in this book was its intriguing summary. I went in anticipating a typical romance but was delightfully surprised! The story invites you into a magical journey with a woman who can travel through time, exploring various versions of her life and the 'what-ifs' that accompany them. It poignantly explores themes of loss, choices, and the transformative power of love.

The protagonist, Erica, is both strong and relatable. Due to her extraordinary ability to glimpse alternate realities, she often keeps people at arm's length. However, when she meets Daniel at a party, she takes a significant step by trusting him with her secret. As their lives intertwine, they face a heart-wrenching tragedy that leaves them wrestling with grief. Erica begins to wonder if their true lives are found in those alternate versions, prompting her to make a difficult choice: which path does she truly want to follow? Can revisiting their past decisions lead to a brighter future?

This book truly delivers! Its premise evokes memories of fantastic films that explore time travel. The pacing is just right, and the characters are vividly portrayed, reacting in ways that resonate deeply. Erica, in particular, experiences substantial growth in her relationships, ultimately leading her to a decision that feels perfectly aligned with both her and Daniel’s futures. The ending? Simply beautiful and incredibly satisfying!

If you enjoy stories about couples overcoming obstacles to be together, this book is a must-read. I can’t wait to discover more works by this author!

A great thought provoking story,
Beautiful, with a few sad tears along the way!

It got off to a slow start (why it's lost a 🌟) but after a certain point you won't be able to put it down.

I found the idea of this novel super intriguing. I am someone who always asks themselves “What if I had done this differently?” and yet never regrets anything, because who knows in what place I would be if I has taken one single decision differently. And in general, I am happy, healthy, and surrounded by lovely people.

So finding out how Erica decides, if she reconsiders the paths she has taken was extremely interesting to me.

I loved the aspect of the “parallel-universe”, if that is what you want to call it – Erica’s ability to see all the paths she could have taken and how life could have unfolded. This also provoked the mixture of sadness and happiness that you feel throughout the novel. There is no simply wrong or right, yes or no.

The story is beautifully written and easy to follow, engaging and compelling. I can only recommend it!

Who wouldn't want the gift of time travel? In a world dominated by superhero films and fiction, I think we've all thought about this. We assume it would be fun to visit the past, to see a time we were not meant to live in. After reading the synopsis of The Start of Us, I was immediately drawn in, and I'm happy to say, author Hannah Emery didn't disappoint. I found Erica's journey to be fun, emotional, and unputdownable. If you're looking for a unique take on love stories, this one is for you.

This was quite an emotional story, so it’s not for everyone’s taste. However, I did enjoy it.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

I really liked this book, I requested it because of the compare to Josie Silver, I was not disappointed.
I loved how Erica has the ability to have time traveling moments that can last minutes or days. It allows us as the reader to see how the character explores her life with this knowledge. It has sad and happy moments for the knowledge gained during the travel experiences. It's a unique ride to see how this information plays out in her life. I recommend this book, it's different from all the main stream reads.

Thank you to the publisher for my eARC copy of this book. Unfortunately I didn’t love this book and therefore didn’t finish, I just didn’t connect with this one. Not for me, sorry.

This was a completely emotional read for me. If you have suffered from infant loss, it's a book you should enter with some caution.

Time travel and alternative universe stories are ones I really enjoy and I felt this was done well here. However, I often found the story dragged, and there were a lot of predictable moments in the story.

This is an unusual love story. It's also an unusual story about dealing with grief. Erica has the ability to time travel but she can't really control it. She meets and falls in love with Daniel and then, well, he's gone. She tries to use her time traveling to cope and try again but no spoilers from me. I'm not sure why but this one didn't grab me as much as some other novels which have explored the what-ifs. That doesn't mean that others won't find it touching. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Before reading this book, prepare yourself. This book should come with a trigger warning: infant loss.

Don’t let the cute cover fool you, this is a story about love, loss and grief. It gave me major About Time and Two Lives of Lydia Bird vibes.

A story about what if’s, second chances, alternate realities... What if you could change the pain, but you lose the love?

I found Erica’s choices a bit selfish, but when you’re hurting, you tend to not think rationally. With that said, my heart will still always be with David. He was it for me.

I found this book painfully beautiful and I’d recommend it if you like to break your heart then slowly put it back together.

Thank you to netgallery, the publishers and the author for the opportunity to read and review this book! It was a wonderful experience.

This was a really emotional story. It had components that were similar to Oona Out of Order, which was a bit of a turn off for me, simply because I had just read Oona before reading this. It was a good story, and it read quick. I sympathized with Erica throughout the story. I would not want this gift but I enjoyed reading about her.

I received an advance copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.

This story requires the reader to suspend belief. I love sliding doors type fiction and believe in serendipitous moments. Erica is a lovely character, easy to empathise with, flawed and relatable you believe in her.

Immersed in Erica's emotional, often heartbreaking tale you realise, she has difficult choices to make. The story's concept resonates as you read, and you may wonder what if in your life.

I received a copy of this book from On More Chapter via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

The Start of Us follows the story of Erica as she deals with an awful loss. Erica has known she is different for a long time now, as a child she was able to time travel to another life in which everything panned out differently. When she is trying to work her way through her recent loss, she finds herself contemplating whether she can go back and use this ability to remove this loss, yet keep everything else exactly as it is.

I thought the storyline for this book had so much promise, as it is certainly a different spin on most romance novels you encounter. I did however find some parts of this story somewhat predictable, and unfortunately this story just didn't pull me in as I had so hoped it would.

This is an unusual book. The main character Erica has the ability to travel through the past. She disappears from present day for minutes or hours and visits moments from her own past. She has no control over when it happens, has no real clue as to why it happens to her, but she does know that as long as she has company she won't disappear from the present. After her boyfriend breaks up with her, she experiences a moment not from her past, but from her present in an alternative life. Shortly after, she starts a relationship with Daniel, but tragedy strikes and Erica has to decide if she should risk using her unusual gift to make things better.

I had a hard thing getting into the story. I felt like the pacing was off, with months sometimes going by in the space of a paragraph and one day sometimes being exhaustively explored. This created some dragging moments. I also had a hard time connecting with Erica, and at times found her to be quite dull and boring. Her relationship with Daniel was similarly dull, with no real chemistry between them.

The story plays with the Sliding Doors idea, how little decisions we make throughout the day all start adding up at the end. It felt very similar to The Two Lives of Lydia Bird, but unfortunately I prefer Silver's writing to Emery's.

When I first saw this, my first thought was that it would be a more whimsical version of The Time Traveler’s Wife. However, this ended up being quite different. After the end of one relationship, Erica begins a relationship with Daniel. What Erica once thought were memories, end up actually being glimpses into another life, much like a “what if” situation, begging for her to consider if she should have made different choices in her own life, as well as, in relationships. Initially, I found this to be an interesting premise, but for some reason, it just didn’t work for me.

I think my main issue with the book was that I never became invested in Erica or her relationship with Daniel. I didn’t feel any great romance between them, making it hard for me to root for them, much less care about them either way. Daniel felt like any other secondary character and it just didn’t work. Some of my favorite books include secondary characters that truly help drive the story, but this was pretty much the Erica show, and unfortunately, she just wasn’t a very likable character.

Another huge let-down for me was Erica’s glimpses, time-travels, or whatever you want to call them. Overall, not much happened so I was left wondering, “what is the point?” Despite ups and downs the story has an overall HEA, not much happens during the travels, and although there is certainly some reflection about life choices, I didn’t feel that much of a statement was made.

I do applaud Hannah Emery’s creative vision and ideas for her plot, but as a whole, this just wasn’t a great read for me.

*Thanks to NetGalley for providing this review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Sadly this book didn’t do it for me. Struggling with anything too sad and this was in places so unfortunately not for me.

Daniel and Erica meet at a party when Erica’s boyfriend dumps her. Soon they become firm friends and he encourages her to take a chance at life.
The only snag is Erica can slip into the past and see how life was but now she is saying how life could be. Moving forward with Daniel will she find out if the grass is greener.
This was a lovely read. I’m not massively into chick lit but I enjoyed this one and would read more by Hannah in future. Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

Did not really connect with this story and its protagonist right from the start - the way she just bawled and tried to cling to the man dumping her did not make a stellar impression and it just went downhill from there, because I couldn't bring myself to like her enough to root for her. The story thus fell flat for me, unfortunately

Since she was a child, Erica has known she was different: able to lose herself in ‘another reality’ for minutes, hours or even days. It only happens when she is alone and troubled, so she does everything within her power not to visit her past. But, with the dissolution of her relationship with Mike, she’s in a weird spot. See, she can see, but never interact with these slices of time from her own personal history, or moments that inform who she has become.

Then she meets Daniel and feels as if she is able to share “all” of herself with him – and readers are meant to see this as the ‘relationship of the ages’ for the two of them. And being honest with Daniel about the ‘time slips’ also brings her into a crisis point of sorts. Never having been able to ‘interact’ with those moments, she thought they were ‘messages’ of how things should be – when they were more ‘alternates’ to the world she lives in. Forcing some questions (of course) and several attempts to see if ‘changing’ something in her actual reality is going to affect the alternate – or even which is the ‘real’ reality. Confused yet? As a premise it is wildly intriguing and interesting – and makes you want to read on through the end despite the issues.

And yes, there are some issues – the connection between Daniel and Erica feels ‘rushed’ with Erica’s character being wholly formed and palpable, while Daniel was more transparent and felt cobbled together – for the romance to feel substantial and real, he needed to as well – and for me he just didn’t. Additionally, the pacing and often large gaps of time that left the reader wondering about time lapse – where one paragraph jumps into months and another is simply minutes – the disparity there is jarring and takes far longer than it should to adjust to that. Unique, individual and more challenge than I expected, I would have appreciated some tweaks and tighter editing, but the concept was unlike others I had read before and made up for the construct issues in small ways.

I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.

Review first appeared at <a href=”http://iam-indeed.com/start-us-hannah-emery/” ><a> I am, Indeed </a>

Thank you to NetGalley and One More Chapter for the ARC of “The Start of Us” by Hannah Emery.

“The Start of Us” follows Erica as she deals with a tragic loss. Erica has always known she was different. As a child, she discovers that she is able to time travel to a parallel life in which everything is different. When this loss occurs she wonders if she can fix things in her other life to have all the same relationships without the loss. This begs the question: if you got the chance to live another life, would you?

The premise of this book is very interesting. Being able to switch between different storylines of your own life sounds like an easy fix. But of course a different life means different decisions and ultimately a different you. This idea could go a lot of different ways, but this one was pretty predictable. 

This book didn't grip me the way I had hoped. It was slow moving and the climax seemed pretty anti-climactic. I didn't have enough time with the pre-loss world to fall in love with it, so the loss fell flat for me. The stakes just didn't feel high enough.

I did enjoy Erica as a character though. She is sweet and cautious, if a bit predictable. I wanted to root for her and see her do great things, I just don't feel like she had enough time to develop or grow.

Sadly, I could only give this book 2 stars. There were just too many gaps and holes for me to fill in as a reader. It's pretty easy and go with the flow, so perhaps some people might love it, but it wasn't my style.