13 Going on 30, but if Jenna had been more open and honest about her birthday wish and the repercussions - in other words, BETTER than the famous film. I was skeptical starting out because the similarities with 13 Going on 30 were driving me nuts, but this novel surprised me by taking a different turn! Very glad I stuck with it, as I was expecting a predictable ending, which was not the case! (The author also states in her thank you note her sources of inspiration, one of them being 13 Going on 30 and other time travelling movies from the early 2000s.) Perfect amount of romance and comedy to remind readers each part of life is worth living.

What a delightful, poignant, and tear-jerking time travel story. Containing the same things I loved in What Alice Forgot and Thirteen Going on Thirty, The Good Part is a reflection on what we consider "arriving" in life. Does life ever get good or easy? Is the bad stuff necessary for the good stuff to be appreciated? Does all of it make us who we are? I'll be pressing this book into the hands of friends for months to come. Highly recommend!

Gah, this was so slow! And not at all a romance like it is billed as.

The characters were nothing special and there wasn't anything unique about the story or Lucy's life. There were a lot of pieces of the missing sixteen years that were thrown in just as tropes (both a dead friend and a dead child, really?) or story filler. Lucy's life when she was younger was pretty standard and her life sixteen years later is equally as standard. Her marriage is fine, her kid is fine, her job is stressful but she's high up in it, okay, cool.

Maybe I just expected more from the summary and the concept. Three stars because it was an easy read and not quite annoying enough for me not to finish.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for a review.

Sophie Cousens just does it on a deeper level. I loved The Good Part, and think this is my favorite of her books so far. I adored these characters and found the book equally poignant and laugh-out-loud funny at times, with some really creative futuristic elements. Life is hard, but this was a wonderful reminder that the hard parts that we may want to skip are part of what make us who we are. So much growing and evolving happens between your early twenties and your late thirties, and this was a good reminder for me, being right in the middle of that. Also, not a major note, but I really enjoyed the setting in this story. A lot of these British rom-coms are based in London, and it was refreshing for the story to be based more outside of the big city while still having some fun London bits.

Thank you Netgalley and Putnam for the early copy in exchange for an honest review!

I adored this book!

26 year old Lucy is tired of her life and wants to get to the point where everything is sorted. After a terrible day she makes a wish to skip to the good part of her life.

She wakes up and it is 16 years later and she seemingly has everything she’s ever wanted, but remembers nothing of how she got there.

This book is funny, heartwarming and romantic. I had so much fun reading it. It gave me the feeling of the first time I read a Sophie Kinsella book. It was just feel-good!

Thanks so much Netgalley and Peguin for the ARC! I loved it!

"𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝚖𝚊𝚢𝚋𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚗'𝚝 𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚌𝚞𝚝𝚜 𝚒𝚗 𝚕𝚒𝚏𝚎. 𝙼𝚊𝚢𝚋𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚕𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚒𝚝 𝚊𝚕𝚕, 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚒𝚝 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚛𝚎."

📖 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙂𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝙋𝙖𝙧𝙩 𝙗𝙮 𝙎𝙤𝙥𝙝𝙞𝙚 𝘾𝙤𝙪𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙨

Have you ever had a day that just goes from bad to worse? To Lucy, it seems all she has are bad days. All her friends are accomplished with fancy jobs and homes. Then there’s Lucy: the room she rents is falling apart, her roommates are weird and gross and there’s a high likelihood that her ceiling is going to collapse and kill her in her sleep. 🫠

Lately she finds herself wishing she could just skip to the good part. Then one little wish later she finds herself propelled into the future!

In the future, Lucy has to navigate motherhood, how to be a wife and a successful business woman when mentally she’s stuck as 26 year old in a 42 year old’s body. How would you feel if you had everything you ever wanted, but missed out on all the little things that happened to get there?

This book was absolutely perfect. It deals with growing up, finding yourself, motherhood, loss, love, and self acceptance. It moved me to tears multiple times. The future isn’t guaranteed but if we take it day by day we can hope that the life we build and our collection of memories makes us feel whole. 🤍

>> The relationship between Felix and Mr. Finkley was so heartwarming, I cried.

This book felt like cross between BIG, 13 Going On 30, The Family Man & Back to the Future! 🎥

Tropes: contemporary romance, time travel, magic, amnesia, mental health, closed door romance, coming of age, motherhood

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley I’m exchange for my honest review! 🩶

THE GOOD PART is a cozy, sweet romance that reminded me a lot of the movies Big and 13 Going On 30.

Lucy is 26 and can’t wait for the good part of her life to begin. On a particularly awful evening after getting into an argument with her best friend, having her tongue almost sucked off by a flashing date, and getting stuck in the rain in uncomfortable shoes with no money, she wishes that she could just skip to the good part. The next morning, she wakes up in bed next to an unfamiliar (but handsome) stranger who claims he’s her husband.

Sophie Cousens obviously has an amazing sense of humor and there were several parts in this book that made me giggle. And although the trope is somewhat familiar, THE GOOD PART has enough differences from those other stories to make it a worthwhile read.

Thanks very much to Penguin Group/Putnam and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

I. Am. Sobbing. 😭 I love when I read the right book at the right time. I love when I read a book that feels like a therapeutic experience. I love a romance with amazing depth of both characters and themes. And I LOVE SOPHIE COUSENS 4EVAHHH.

Here’s what to expect from this incredible novel:
🕰️ Time travel magic
🕰️ Love story but backwards
🕰️ About Time + Midnight Library vibes but better
🕰️ You’re reading it a book but it feels like a cinematic experience
🕰️ laugh out loud humor
🕰️ heartwarming moments + heartwrenching moments
🕰️ if you enjoyed Sophie’s other books you’ll love this one too

I’ve literally had dreams that were like this book. This story means SO MUCH TO ME. I went into it blind and I discovered new things about myself! Thank you Sophie for blessing the universe with your stories and please never stop. 🥹💖

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for the ARC!

Admittedly, I am not a fan of books that feature any type of time travel. I often get frustrated in the cluelessness of the main character and the catching up he/she has to do and who they tell. All that said, I think Sophie Cousens did an excellent job of infusing this plot structure with humor and heart. The characters were all so well established it was easy to slip into how Lucy must feel and even more so Felix and Sam. The other thing this book really brought to mind was the major life changes that happen between someone's late 20s to early 40s.
Where this book could have been not a great fit for me, Cousens's writing style, humor, and heart made it an enjoyable read.

What would you do if you could skip to the good parts of your life? That’s exactly what happens to Lucy, who while feeling low about her life makes a wish on a machine to skip to the good parts. She wakes up with a wonderful husband, two kids, and a dream job but can’t remember the 16 years leading up to all of it.

I loved the characters in this book, especially Lucy and Felix. There were definitely times I laughed out loud and other times I found myself wanting to cry for Lucy. I felt myself just as torn as Lucy to what she should do at the end and to me, it’s a sign of a great book.

Thank you to Netgalley and to the publishers for allowing me to read this advanced copy. #thegoodpart #netgalley alley

From the moment I picked up this book until I was done, I was thoroughly hooked. Sophie Cousens is one of my favorite romance writers, and this book had such a different feel than the others but was just as engaging. I loved the touches of magical realism that tied into her early 2000’s movie inspirations. I audibly cheered at the end of the book (and scared my cat) which is always the sign of a book well written.

Thank you Putnam Books and NetGalley for an arc of The Good Part. This book is just so fun all around to read. Lucy is 26 and frustrated with having 3 roommates, while she feels her friend group is all moving up in their careers and she is stuck fetching coffee at a tv station. She is out drunk one night and makes a wish on a wishing machine in a convenience store to skip to the good part of her life. She wakes up 16 years in the future in the suburbs married with two kids. She doesn't know where she is and has to fake it if and when her memories come back. It is similar to 13 going on 30, but I loved this book more. A bit magical, a bit romance, a bit friendship, it is has it all.

I hesitate to call this a romance, but I think it firmly fits into the Chick Lit category. Normally I am all about Sophie Cousens' books, but this one didn't have that spark for me. It's well written, but I didn't warm to the main character. I do like the message of the book- life has its ups and downs at any stage. There's good and there's bad and you can't just skip to any one part of it. I thought Felix was very well done. He's close to my son's age and his speech and character were so close to what boys that age are like. I needed more romance in this book though!

Lucy is tired of being 26. She is tired of waking up in her grungy flat, with water leaking onto her bed, and being the errand runner at the tv station. After a bad date gone worse, she stumbles into a store and makes a wish on the wishing machine. She just wants to skip to the good part already. When was up and it’s 16 years later, Lucy needs to figure out who she is and how she got her.

Ok Felix was by far my favorite character in this book. He was just so sweet and wholesome and I just wanted to hug this little boy! This book is a mixture of 13 Going On 30 and Big, and I was here for every single page. I think we have all hit a low point in life and wished we could just skip to when we have everything figured out. I won’t give anything away, but this book was just so wonderful and fun!

This ended up being a delightful book in the vein of 13 Going on 30 and Big that really surprised me. Barely making ends meet with a minimum wage runner job at a TV studio, Lucy makes a wish to “skip to the good part” of her life after a disastrous day and wakes up the next morning 16 years older, married with 2 kids, some new wrinkles and her dream job. I’ll be honest, I really disliked Lucy at the beginning of this book and I almost stopped reading because of it. I’m very glad I didn’t, though, because as she deals with her situation (is it time travel? retrograde amnesia? perimenopausal memory loss?), she really grew on me and I think that was precisely the point - Lucy’s character development was really the highlight here - also, I would definitely hate 26-year old me so I can’t judge too harshly. As a bonus, the ancillary characters in this book were fantastic. Sam? I swoon. Felix? Basically a British version of my own sweet oldest boy and the relationship Lucy grows into that warmed my heart the most. Amy? Incredibly accurate depiction of a toddler. 4 warm, fuzzy stars for this one.

Pub Date: 11/7/23
Review To Be Published: 11/1/23

This was exactly what I needed to break me from my reading slump! Sophie Cousens has yet to let me down.

📖 The Details:
The Good Part by Sophie Cousens

⏱️Brief Summary:
The story starts with Lucy’s life pretty much in shambles so she makes a wish on a wishing machine to skip to the good part of her life where it’s all sorted. Then she wakes up and… that’s exactly what happened.

💁🏻‍♀️My Take:
This was BEAUTIFUL. It was funny, it was sweet, it pulled my heartstrings and made me question what I’d do in the same situation. It’s hard not to root for Lucy - and for every other character in her life. Her son was so sweet, her husband was so amazing (and real! Like the conversations they had were so honest and felt very realistic), and her friends seemed like the exact friends you want then and now. For someone who hates ✨sci-fi✨ this one really drew me in (even though it was just minor time travel, I still count it!)

P.S definitely 13 going on 30 vibes 😍

5⭐️ recommend 👍

The Good Part is very reminiscent of Big and 13 going on 30.- a couple of my favorite movies. Lucy is twent-six and is struggling in life with money, her job and love life. One night she makes a wish to get to the good part in her life. She wakes up as a forty something with everything she could have asked for except she doesn’t remember how she got there. This was such a fun quick read. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for the E-ARC. This is my own opinion.

The Good Part by Sophie Cousens asks the question, what if you could skip the hard part of your life and fast forward to “the good part?” Lucy, the main female character, is 26, living in a terrible apartment, working a job where she isn’t appreciated, and barely making it paycheck to paycheck. After a particularly terrible day, she finds a wishing machine and wishes to just skip this hard time in her life and her wish comes true. But was it worth skipping 16 years of her life?

I adore Sophie Cousens books. They are always funny and emotional and this is no exception. I loved the element of the wish and the question of was it really magic or is she just suffering from amnesia? What I loved most is that you, as the reader, truly don’t know. I loved the side characters, especially Felix. This book got surprisingly deep at points and really made me emotional.

This is a book that will make you appreciate your life, even if things are hard. I hugged my children a little tighter after finishing this book and this is a book that I cannot wait to add to my physical book collection.

If you are a fan of movies like Big, Freaky Friday, and 13 Going On 30, this book will be perfect for you! It definitely feels like watching a romcom movie while you are reading it.

This was another super cute romance that I greatly enjoyed reading. A great book to pick up if you want to read something charming and lighthearted.

I really enjoyed this book, it sucked me in from the start. It gave me a nostalgic feeling because it reminded me of movies that I grew up watching such as 13 going on 30, and Freaky Friday. I empathized with Lucy as she had to overcome a lot of obstacles in her life. I couldn’t put this book down. I found myself saying “one more chapter “ at the end of every chapter.