I love a good Freaky Friday moment! I thought the characters and the plot were fleshed out so well, in fact I wanted even more. This is a quick read with a big message packed in, and lots of deep issues. I loved Lucy, and thought her reaction to waking up in an alternate reality and her feelings and experiences were very realistic. Felix was the best character! I loved that little cheeky guy! The message throughout the story is one everyone should be reminded of: Every breath is the good part, every day is a gift. Once again, Sophie Cousens knocks it out of the park. 4/5

I absolutely LOVED this book and the only reason it is not getting 5 stars is because the ending felt so incredibly rushed that it broke my heart a bit. I would have rather read another 50 pages than to get such a rushed ending that just left me wanting and needing more.

Overall though this was incredible - heartfelt, witty, full of comebacks and drama and the banter was divine.

26 year old Lucy is going through it - just like all 20-somethings do. However after a particularly rough night she comes across a wishing machine and decides to wish for it all to become good. She wishes to skip the bad parts and just get to where it's good. But is that really a dream come true?

The 20's are rough and I think 90% of us (if not more!) can agree, but is skipping it all the way you get the goodness?

The author does a fantastic job at throwing Lucy into the deep end of motherhood, of a relationship, of life - the details are not skimped on and the author goes above and beyond to showcase this life. Absolutely hilarious book, and the details are just what makes it even better. The author does a fine job at highlighting that sometimes you need the trials in life in order to appreciate the good moments moreso. Super quick read and was an utter blast.

Sophie Cousens is becoming one of my favorite authors. Her books just always make me happy. Lucy Young, is 26 and overwhelmed. She isn’t where she thought she would be in life, her career or love life. She is a runner for her TV career and she lives in a crowded apartment with a leaky ceiling.
One night on her way home, she heads into a store and finds a wishing machine. She can’t help but put money in and wish to get to the good part of her life.
She wakes up the next morning, in a bed with a handsome man and a wedding ring. She apparently has an awesome job in TV and two beautiful children. She is freaking out because what is going on? How could this be real. She tries to fake it in this life but she can’t keep up. She decides to tell her husband that something is wrong and he takes her to the doctor. All kinds of things come up with the visit to the doctor. Slowly her husband, her best friend and her parents help to keep her up to date. She is in such a confusing place. She likes this new life but she thinks she would have liked living the old life, to get here. Can Lucy make peace with the here and now, will she decide to go back? It is so sweet how her son helps her and how her dad knows how she feels? Does she have amnesia or has she lost her mind? This story was so sweet. It had such endearing moments and characters. I am so glad I was able to read this book. I can’t wait to read the next book by Cousens.
I want to thank Netgalley and the author for my copy for an honest review. It was my pleasure to read and review this one.
Overall Rating: 4

Down on her luck Sophie wishes to "get to the good part" and fast forwards her life and wakes up in her 40s. She doesn't know anything about her current life but finds out she is married has two kids a big house and her dream job. She is faced with the opportunity to stay in her 40s or go back to her 20s where she was taken advantage of at work, living in a run down apartment, and broke. While slow at parts this book was so unique and left me thinking about it long after I read it. If given the opportunity would you skip ahead to the good part. Really enjoyed the read however it is not my favorite Sophie Cousens book.

Thank you to NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam, G.P. Putnam's Sons for the ARC!

Is living the life you’ve wished for really a dream come true?

What a charming book! Lucy finds herself in a slump and stumbles upon a wishing machine. She wishes to skip to the “good part” and ends up at a different point of her life when she wakes up the next day. I enjoyed this one.

Thanks to Penguin Group Putnam and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. This is another solid book by the author of This Time Next Year which I truly enjoyed. This book was funny and sweet and I'll definitely read more by Sophie Cousens in the future!

The Good Part by Sophie Cousens
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Lucy is tired of not being taken seriously at work, and living in a crummy flatshare. She makes a wish to skip this part of her life and get to “the good part”, and wakes up to a completely different life.
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What I liked:
-To start with I did the audio and the narrator does such a fun accent for one of the characters. I really enjoyed the audio.
-I love anything that smacks of time travel, and this one was a fun premise.
-There is great humor throughout the book but the first third had me really laughing out loud.
-The emotional parts of the story got me seriously teary eyed and I know this will be a story that sticks with me.
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4⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Witty and emotional, I enjoyed every moment.

Felix and Sam stole my heart!
I love books that explore time travel. I love the inspiration of the 13 Going on 30. Highly recommend.

Absolutely loved this story and every thing about it. Sophie has quickly become one of my auto buy authors and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I only made it about 15 % through. It didn’t catch my attention, and it may have just been the wrong book at the wrong time, because I’ve enjoyed Sophie Cousen’s previous books a lot. But I also am realizing that magical realism is not my favorite genre. I may still give it another try down the road, but it just wasn’t for me right now

The Good Part by Sophie Cousens kept me hooked from the very beginning and I could barely put it down to the end. It is the story of Lucy Young, age 26 living a broke life, not meeting quality men, and working a job where she's not using her full potential. One evening after yet another disastrous date, she ends up in a little shop finding a wishing machine. Her wish is to 'skip to the good part' of her life. She wakes up 16 years later in 'the good part', but she suddenly realizes that maybe she didn't want to pass by those years, not even remembering what happened during that time and how she ended up in the life she's living. I loved this book, it was fun, sweet, poignant, and felt like a nice cuddle.

At 26, Lucy is fed up with her life. A dead-end job, irresponsible roommates and men who aren’t even worth a second date. As she is headed home after a frustrating day, she stops in a shop where she finds an antique wishing machine. The elderly shop owner encourages her to try it, giving her a coin to use. She wishes for the “good part” of her life to begin. Next thing Lucy knows, she is waking up in a beautiful room with a strange man in the bed. The strange man seems to know her and expects her to take care of the children’s morning needs. When Lucy looks in the mirror, she seems to be sixteen years older! She has a beautiful home, clothes and a successful career. She’s not sure if she has skipped sixteen years or has forgotten them. She attempts to go along with her new life and not mess things up, but also wants to know how she got to this point in life. She’s very conflicted about going back to her old life but is getting attached to everyone and everything in her new one. I found this a very entertaining book!

Also reviewed on B&N under 1IrishEyes430 and Kobo under IrishEyes430

Funny and entertaining. I loved it.
Many thanks to NetGalley and to PENGUIN GROUP Putnam for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

First thought: I always love this genre of time travel, I think it’s fun to see characters in situations that they’re forced to reflect and make big decisions. I loved this book up until the end, this may be unpopular opinion but I hated the last 10-15min of this book. I would have made a different choice than this character. I still highly recommend though, it’s an amazing read.

Lucy is 26yrs old and she not where she wants to be in life. She’s at the bottom of the food chain at work, she’s living in a flat where her ceiling may cave in and her 3 best friends are farther ahead in life than her. After a night out with the girls and a horrible date she wanders into a convince store and finds a wishing machine. The lady at the store counter gives her the coins she needs and she makes a wish to SKIP TO THE GOOD PART OF HER LIFE.

Lucy wakes up the next day 16yrs in the future. She married, has 2 kids and is running her own business. What the hell happened, she has no memory of the last 16yrs and all she wants is to find a way back to her old life.

Lucy will have to learn to navigate what it means to be a wife, mother, daughter and boss at this new stage in her life. It won’t be easy and she missed a lot in those 16yrs. Sometimes skipping to the good part isn’t what you expect.

Read this amazing story to find out how Lucy’s story unfolds.

Themes you’ll find:
* Time Travel
* Falling in Love
* Parenthood
* Friendships
* Navigating Loss
* Work Life Balance
* “What If Life”

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Lucy Young is twenty-six, rents a room in a flat where the ceiling leaks, lives with three other people, none of whom take their turn buying toilet paper, lives paycheque to paycheque, and has a low-paying job where everyone thinks she's there to get coffee. She's especially tired of the dating apps that lead to horrible dates. So when she stumbles upon a "wishing machine" in a tiny shop after being caught in the pouring rain with a broken shoe she decides to try it. Lucy wishes she could skip to the good part. The part where her life is settled and stable. Waking up the next day she's got a good-looking husband, two kids, great house, and a high-powered job. The bigger shock is coming to terms with her forty year old face. But she doesn't remember anyone, or any part of the last sixteen years.

I loved this book!! Honestly, it had everything. An intelligent story, a likable heroine, precocious kids, and a great message. What does it mean to wish away the difficult parts of your life? Isn't personal growth found in the struggle? And how can you appreciate what you have if you can't remember how hard you worked to get there? Not to mention missing the milestones in your kids' lives, in your marriage... Lucy's road to who she really wants to be, what she wants out of life in terms of work/life balance, and the kind of mum she wants to be is such a beautiful journey.

This one reads more like women's fiction than romance, and Sophie Cousens knocks it out of the park.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Sophie Cousens, NetGalley, and G.P. Putnam’s Sons for the e-arc of The Good Part! I love Sophie Cousens and enjoy her other books, so I was really excited to read this one!

Lucy Young is 26 and stuck. She’s at a job that doesn’t appreciate her, strikes out on all her dates, and lives in a leaky apartment. After one particularly bad night, she stumbles upon a wishing machine, where she wishes to skip to the good part of her life.
When Lucy wakes up, she’s 42 and married with 2 children, a beautiful house, and her dream job. She just doesn’t remember how any of it came to be. As Lucy tries to figure out how she ended up 16 years in the future, she also tries to cope with losing 16 fundamental years and the pressure thrust upon her to be a wife, mom, and boss.
Soon Lucy must decide if she wants to go back to 26 and a messy life, or stay at 42 with only her memories but no actual experiences.

When I first started The Good Part, I had trouble getting into it. I’m not sure if it was because I didn’t quite like “before Lucy” or was feeling picky because I’m a mood reader, but I could only read a few pages at a time. I set it down for almost a month, and then came back to it and read 75% of the book in just a couple of days.
I ended up loving Lucy, and all the other characters in her story. There were quite a few parts that made me cry, parts that made me laugh, and in the end I was trying to make a choice with Lucy — go through 16 hard years for no guarantee that life will end up the exact same way, or stay in the good part and have old memories. Anyone who is already a fan of Sophie will love this book.

4.5 stars rounded to 5
Closed door romance, with some swoony flirting.

The Good Part is giving 13 Going on 30, and I ate up every word of it!

Like many millennials who are barely scraping by while well into their 20s after buying the line of "go to college, get a job doing what you love, and the rest will work itself out" Lucy is tired of living paycheck to paycheck and going on one horrible first date after another while watching her friends succeed in their own lives.

After yet another awful app-matched date, Lucy makes a wish that she could skip to the good part of her life, and she wakes up as a 42-year-old married mother of 2, and a high powered TV executive running her own channel! Lucy quickly learns that maybe while the good parts of our lives are awesome, they aren't quite as good without the experiences gained on the journey.

I thought this book was so fun! I'm new to romance books that have a smidge of magical realism, but I thoroughly enjoyed Lucy's journey of trial and error to fit into her family but also find her way back to her own time.

I wanted to like this book because I'm a fan of the author but this was a hard one to get through. It was like a millennial version of the movie Big but instead of a child wanting to be an adult, it was an adult wanting to skip past the struggle years of establishing yourself in a career and figuring out relationships. Given I'm here for the concept but I felt like it got too bogged down in the details of the future environment that it was hard to follow in places. Also, the main character was far too whiney and made it hard to root for her which also made the book feel like a slog. Overall, it wasn't bad but it wasn't a book I found myself wanting to read non-stop.

When I saw that one of my auto-buy authors was coming out with a 13 Going on 30 style story about a woman wishing to skip ahead to the good part of her life, I was sold. Many thanks to NetGalley and GP Putnam's Sons for the digital ARC of The Good Part by Sophie Cousens.

13 Going on 30 is one of my all-time favorite movies from when I was younger. When we rented it from Blockbuster for the first time, I watched it three or four times in a row, just starting it over as soon as it ended. The concept is a bit disturbing if you think about it too much, but the movie manages to be fun and quirky and delightful from start to finish while also making me sob buckets at the ending. Those were the vibes I expected from The Good Part.

Reader, those were not the vibes. The Good Part follows 26-year-old Lucy Young, who is tired of her low-level job and shared apartment. After a particularly exhausting day, she stumbles upon a wishing machine and wishes to skip ahead to the good part of her life. Then, she wakes up in her 40-year-old body with no recollection of the 16 years in between.

Perhaps I've just aged out of finding this sort of thing funny, but honestly, much of this story was stressful to read. Watching 26-year-old Lucy try to navigate her adulty-er adult life somehow wasn't as cute and funny as watching a 13-year-old play at being a grownup. She rolls right in and makes all the sorts of mistakes we expect a mid-twenties woman to make, but they've got bigger consequences because she's now a 40 year old woman with a husband and children and employees who're counting on her.

Even if I was stressed watching Lucy navigate her new life for the beginning bits, I did ultimately get really sucked in to the story. Cousens plays with the time travel concept in interesting ways, and we get to fall in love with Lucy's new life along with her.

I also appreciated the way Cousens pulls in big themes of growing up and navigating life, such as grief and loss. This is part of what makes the book heavier than I expected it to be, but it felt raw and real and made the book that much more compelling.

Once I settled in to accepting the tone as it was instead of what I expected it to, I couldn't put The Good Part down. I had to see what would happen and whether Lucy would be able to return to where she left off, or if she'd even want to. I highly recommend this book to fans of books about growing up and navigating the hard stuff in life. It's got a bit of romance as well, but in a sort of untraditional structure that made it feel much more like Lucy's life story than a love story.

This was a great break for me from reading mysteries and thrillers. I laughed out loud a few times. That said, as much as enjoyed the light fun book, the ending fell short for me. I felt like at least a few more chapters were needed to not rush it. It was fun though, super easy and fast read.
Thanks to netgalley, the publisher and the author for the advanced copy, and the laughs.