This is a hauntingly beautiful narrative. The author's creativity and detailed storyline was impressive, and I was continuously drawn into the story, wanting to read more. I find stories like these challenging to read - they're outside my own traditional reading comfort zone, and they ask us to ponder some of life's biggest questions - what is the meaning of life? if you could go back in time, would you make the same choices, or would you forever alter your own and others' life course? The ending brought this story to a heartwarming finish, and for that I was very grateful.

Perhaps I should have paid closer attention to the phrase "devastating tragedy" in the description, because I was expecting something a bit campy like 17 Again, maybe just a smidge more introspective. Instead the book opened with SIDS, suicide, attempted murder, and child death. Oh, also the threat of "something terrible" happening to the unborn son mentioned in the synopsis. Oof. And there were a lot of references to God? I couldn't tell if that meant it would be a religious/spiritual story or if those were just for flavor, but that's really not my kind of thing, and I'm not in the right headspace for this kind of story. Prospective readers, take note! Perhaps fans of classic Jodi Picoult would be interested?

"We may never fully understand our purpose, but there’s a reason for everything."

Maria is a very pregnant 39 year-old married psychiatrist with two other children who ends up going back in time to her 17 year-old self and being left with an impossible decision. Does she save the life of a young girl or does she go forward and live her life as she did in the past, sacrificing the girl for her own happy life?

This story was a little convoluted for me. It was good but not only did it switch between time periods but it switched between people. Maybe my brain just wasn't up to the task because I had a hard time keeping track. Not all the time but sometimes. I feel like it could have been simplified and been a better story. That's just me, though. It's still a good read just not a great one.

I received this book from Forge Reads through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.

“Once you’ve changed your destiny here, you’ll let go of the life you left behind.”

I absolutely loved this book. It had romance, it had time travel/parallel universes, it had so many emotions and feelings. I started to think about some of the other fictional books I’ve read in which the character(s) time travel and there have been quite a few. While many are focused on the science fiction aspect of time travel, I like to think about the emotional, practical things involved, like what about the people involved in your past and future lives?
That’s exactly what this book is about. Maria is a woman who is about give birth to her third child and based on one decision, she is somehow hurled back to her parents’ house and trapped in the body of her 17-year old self. We follow her as she tries to get back to her former life, as well as figuring out her purpose in life and why this travel happened.
The author wrote this so well, capturing Maria’s anguish with the situation, and the love for her family. You can feel her pain as she grapples with having to decide how to handle the situation she finds herself in. It is not a techy sci-fi book, but the time travel, “Sliding Doors” element adds such depth to this story.
Here are other books I’ve enjoyed that remind me of this book:
• The Time Traveler’s Wife
• How to Stop Time
• The Jane Austen Project
• How to Save a Life
• Here, Now, and Then
• Maybe In Another Life

Adlakha is an American and former psychiatrist. This is her first novel. In it we meet Maria who is a 39-year-old psychiatrist. She is married, has two young daughters and is very pregnant with a son. After a visit from a patient who claims to have come from the future to warn her about something, Maria herself wakes up one day and finds herself in her own 17-year-old body at her parents home. She is confused and desperate to return to her life, but finds that being back there gives her the opportunity to avert a tragedy. Unfortunately doing so will change the course of her life. This is a great recommendation for fans of books such as "The Time Travellers Wife", "Life After Life" or even "Dark Matter'. I really enjoyed it.

Maria is a mom of two girls with another little one on the way. This one is a little boy. When the story starts, Maria is 9 months pregnant, and due any day. Maria is a stressed out working mom with not enough hours in the day. She has a supportive husband named Will and they absolutely love each other!

Maria is a psychiatrist and has a weird patient named Sylvia who give Maria a weird warning... Don't go to the storage shed until AFTER you have the baby. Of course Maria does exactly the opposite. What happens after that is a wonderful story that answers those " what if?" questions. What if you could go back and do something over? What if you could go back and spend more time with a family member? What if you could go back and take away someone else's pain? So many questions to be answered and the author does such a great job telling this story. I will not give away the plot I will just add this...

Maria: "Wear your scars proudly. Let them be a testament to where you've been and what you've survived. They are the road map of your life. They are what made you who you are."

Truly words to live by.

Thank you to Netgalley, Macmillan Tor/Forge and Sarah Adlakha for the eARC of this wonderful book in exchange for my honest review.

I'm not naming names, but this book is awfully similar to another book I read that just happens to be my favorite book ever, therefore I was VERY hesitant going in. (even the covers are hauntingly similar) While this one didn't quite live up to the other book for me, the time travel component still exceeded my expectations as I feel this is generally difficult to do well.

I received a free advance reader's copy and am leaving this review voluntarily...

This was a book that asked "what if?" What if one can go back in time and change the worst thing that happened? What if the worst thing that happened in your life or someone else's life is the reason you two meet? Maria found herself in this dilemma and I must admit I did not envy the choices she had.
Maria herself was a likeable character and one many working mothers can empathize with at the beginning of the story. However, suddenly she's a teenager again and considerably more mature than most teenagers would be. She also insisted on telling everyone that she was from the future which meant that most of the meat of the story took part in a psychiatric hospital.
The author threw in a lot of twists and turns throughout Maria's journey and I got to see how the future carried on while she got used to being young again. The book ended with a few twists at the end which I enjoyed. I love when everything comes together neatly at the end. Based on this fascinating story, I would definitely try more of this author's work.
This book can be read by older teens and adults.

I don't usually pay much attention to the publisher's recommendations regarding which best seller their book resembles, but in this case Sarah Adelkha's debut novel does have elements of both Sliding Doors and Life After Life. It's not only a novel involving time travel, but one where impossible choices must be made by the main character, without knowing the ramifications of these decisions. Lot's of 'what if' moments that had me wanting to know how the novel would play out. Adelkha does well weaving multiple story lines together into an engrossing story with a cohesive ending that I very much enjoyed.

It took me a little bit to warm up to this book, but once it did, I couldn’t put it down. I never expected this book at affect me the way it did, but I can stop thinking about it. So thought-provoking, emotional, & moving! I’m grateful to Net Galley for this advanced copy of a book I’ll never forget.

This book was not my personal cup of tea but I imagine it will be popular with readers who want a cozy, somewhat romantic, somewhat speculative book. It explores alternate versions of the lives of four people (two white heterosexual couples) and what would happen in different versions of their lives. Content warning for suicide and psychological trauma.

I was very intrigued by the premise of this book, but unfortunately it fell very flat for me. I was confused by the back and forth timelines, and I couldn’t keep the characters straight. I wish I’d loved it.

I loved this book. I will admit, I’m a sucker for time travel - in books, in movies, in my day dreams, you get the point. She Wouldn’t Change A Thing was such a unique and original time travel tale, I was engrossed from the very first page. The characters are engaging and the story is riveting. Maria is a married 39 year old mother of two with one on the way. She is making her way through life bogged down by its nuances when suddenly, she wakes up as her seventeen year old self - again. What entails is a journey of love and loss and determining your purpose in life. Reading this book reminded me how with each decision we make, no matter how small, helps to write our story. Now imagine if you could go back in time and make a different decision one that will right a wrong… would you? And if so, at what cost?

Many thanks to Sarah Adlakha, Macmillan/Forge Publishing, and NetGalley for a digital copy of this book. I read and reviewed this voluntarily and opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own. This book is available for purchase on August 10th, 2021!

I'm not a big fan of fantasy and science fiction, but I loved this book! It reminded me of some novels by Cecelia Ahern in the way she plays with fantasy and science fiction. I felt for Maria and her dilemma and I felt invested in her life. It takes a very good author to get me that involved in a fictional character's fate!

I highly recommend this book and I look forward to more by Sarah Adlakha.

With thanks to Sarah Adklakha, Torge books and Netgalley for the digital ARC. All opinions are mine.

4.5 Stars

This book was breathtaking from beginning to end. It's time travel. No, it's not that. It's science fiction. No, not that either. It's literary genius. Yes, it is definitely that. This plot is not new...What sets this book apart is the ingenuity of Sarah Adlakhan and her flawless writing. The characters were wonderfully drawn, and this Canadian loved the descriptions of the south. I also loved the poetic writing that frequently appeared.

I was mesmerized by the writing style and only grew more and more so as I read on and dived into the world of the main characters. What a gifted and talented writer Sarah Adlakha is. I really loved the idea, the development, and the final product. This book is a testament to Miss Adlakha's imagination, storytelling creativity and literary genius. It made me a fan....Read it!

Maria is about to give birth to her third child. She is exhausted and overworked and she kind of hates her life. She thinks of what life would be without her children, how much further in her career she could be. And then she wakes up in the body of her seventeen year old self and all she wants to do is get back to her family. She has been sent back in time, her mind sent into her past self’s body, in order to do something, to save someone. Maria has to decide if she wants to save that person and die in the future, or not save that person and return to her life. Could she live with herself if she did nothing? Is her future family something worth preserving, over the life of this other person?

This book is filled with twists, expected and unexpected, with everything set up in the first four chapters, urging me to keep reading. I read the whole thing in one sitting! I didn’t know what Maria was going to do until she did it. Her thoughts seemed to skew in both directions for different reasons. The layers of the story are so well crafted, the character’s stories weaving in and out of one another in a lovely tale of fate, past lives, and love.

Much of Maria’s time in the past is spent in a psychiatric hospital, which is honestly a different take than I expected, but is totally valid. If a person legitimately traveled back in time and claimed to have done so, they would be thought to be crazy, to need help. Thankfully, Maria carries future secrets with her, things she can use to prove that she’s from the future. She thinks longingly of her children and husband and what they had together, promising herself that she will be the best mother, the best wife, if only she can return to them.

Surprisingly, there are others like Maria, others that are even sent back to the same place and point in time. People who can help her understand what has happened and who carry those same secrets that only a person from the future can know. I liked this layer of believability; there wasn’t a piece of me that thought that the other person was lying in order to take advantage of Maria, to hurt her or trick her. I really loved this because it made it all too obvious that Maria had really traveled to the past and that she wasn’t just experiencing some elaborate hallucination.

Time passed quickly while Maria was committed, glancing over the time that Maria spent in the past. I would have liked this time to be spent with her family, reconnecting with her mom or just enjoying the time she had in the past, as much as she could with such a heavy fate hanging over her head. Instead, she spent a lot of time drugged, locked away in a psychiatric facility. She learned important things there, to be sure, and had time to really think of the possibilities. But still, I would have loved the opportunity to see her parents and past self expanded upon and their relationship fleshed out, especially as Maria’s mother’s death really affected her.

The turns and surprises kept me reading so I could figure out why everything was connected. Maria was a very relatable character, feeling stuck in her life and unaccomplished, as well as guilty for feeling so when she had so much. She gets the chance of a lifetime, to go back, but not for the reasons I first thought and the payoff, no matter what choice she makes, isn’t great. The story is very cohesive and wrapped up well, with extensive and succinct epilogues and chapters after the main event. This is an excellent debut, one that reminds me of some of Jodi Picoult’s better books, with aspects of the podcast, The Bright Sessions, as well as The Time Traveler’s Wife. Anyone who likes those authors will surely love this book, too! Fantasy and science fiction, lite, with more focus on moral choices and doing the right thing, even when it might cost you everything you’ve ever loved. Highly recommend.

This book has quite an interesting premise. What if you were caught between two different times in your own life? And the choices you make (wherever your present happens to be at the moment) will have a profound effect on the rest of your life? Maria is a well-respected psychiatrist, happily married with two children, and pregnant with a son she and her family can't wait to meet. Then her life is turned upside-down when something happens that thrusts her unexpectedly back in time, to when she was a teenager. She still has all of her adult memories, but how and why did this happen? And how does she get back? This story was a departure for me. (Which isn't a bad thing.) The writing is eloquent and descriptive so that it's a pleasure to read the words as the author weaves the story onto the page. I loved the first part and was really very much involved. There were threads going here and there which eventually got somewhat confusing for me as I struggled to keep track. In the end, most of it came together so that I finally understood how and why things happened as they did. All in all, I enjoyed reading this first novel from Ms. Adlakha and will look forward to her future endeavors. Thank you to NetGalley for my advance copy. Pub date is August 10, 2021. Available for preorder now.

Maria is 39 years old and 9 months pregnant when gets shot and wakes up in the life and body of her 15-year-old self. How will she get back to her family and her real life? Why is this happening to her? There is a lot that's compelling about this time travel story, but I couldn't help but feel that the payoff at the end didn't quite work.

I do love a good time travel story and this one certainly fits that bill. I’ve read quite a few time travel books and they all kinda mess with your mind or at least mine. This book was the kind that you want to read really fast. I made myself read it slow so I could just take it all in. I almost feel like I need to go back and reread it now. It was that good!
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the early copy

Thanks to Macmillan-Tor/Forge + Netgalley for the e-ARC of SHE WOULDN"T CHANGE A THING by Sarah Adlakha, expected pub date August 10, 2021. Obviously, all thoughts/feelings are my own.

I love a good story with overlapping timelines, the idea of how much changes if we change one thing, and the theme of are we meant to live the life we are living. Totally hooked from the first page, I especially enjoyed that this was a story involving a middle-ageISH mother and love.