This is the story of how two people who are meant to be, find their way to back each other. We get to see how they individually came to be, then how they met. Their tragedy, and eventually, how they come to reunite.

The synopsis sounded great, and I was so interested to see how everything played out, but this book was a massive slog of horrible editing, poor character development, and outdated, cringy dialogue. I'll try to break this down as concisely as possible, but I have endless notes on all of the massive and reoccurring issues with this book that could be a novel all their own. Sorry for the length!

Firstly, the book goes into the parents back stories, and I'm not quite sure why? The brief moment Shelly and Mikayla mentioned feeling Mikaylas dad's spirit could have stayed, and the car explosion for Abe, but otherwise we really didn't need 25% of the book to be the parents backstory before they even have kids. It was irrelevant to the rest of the story. We then get 50% of the book covering a week in a hospital bed, 10% their time outside of the hospital, and then she finally dies. That leaves 15% of the book for the main "reincarnation" plot to come about. It's disjointed, clunky, and illogical to have it laid out this

Secondly, the editing issues are glaringly obvious from the very first sentence. It has a comma between the middle and last name of our lead character (Crystal Mikayla, Arabella), which makes it immediately confusing when her parents' name is then listed after. We are then riddled with a slog of the following:

- Basic punctuation errors:
Such as "semi- trailer" , "what in the is", "I've gotten word the Ambulance is closed", etc.

- strike-through words that weren't removed:
As in, they literally have the strikethrough line through them, and the editor forgot to take them out. This happens TEN separate times throughout the novel.

- missing information:
I.e. "I'll be back here around 30 for your scan." he says this at around 10 am, but when thirty???? Eventually, we hear it's meant to be after 2pm she's expecting him. He'll also reference characters without using their names, so you're not quite sure who he's talking about.

- incorrect or changed information:
Mikayla has red hair, Abraham writes her a whole awkward poem that references it and gave me massive secondhand embarrassment, yet when they're in Ireland, he talks about her sandy blonde hair. After she passed, he says over the next "couple of years" all he could think about was Mikayla. 3 pages later, it says it's been a week since that scene, and he's out with Lamar, who states "I know it's only been a few months, but any new women in your life yet? It's probably way too early huh?" ...Has it been years or months? Also, why have "a few" people been trying to set him up if it's only been months?

- duplicate and repeating words and sentences:
This happens SO often I was astounded. For example, "Glitter and glory" used to describe the Chippendale twice within a few sentences. Another scene: "her deep crystal blue eyes as they glistened in the moonlight" then "her deep blue crystal eyes glisten in the moonlight." After she's passed, Abe had "blocked all possibility of transfers of any kind," two sentences later, "blocked any potential transfers that came up." He's drinking in the gazebo and says "luckily she fell in love with me too" twice. Says "slight smile on her face" then immediately "slight grin on her face". The final bar scene says "woman staring straight ahead" back to back. These are all either the next sentence or have a sentence between them, so it's blatantly obvious and exceptionally annoying

- illogical information:
"He'd forgotten to take his customary 5 aspirin before he went to bed on the nights he drank." This man is in his early 20s and drinking to get this hungover this badly, regularly? Also, 5 aspirin at once can literally kill you. He needed DAYS to get over a hangover. He woke up hungover on a Tuesday and still felt off on a Friday. And he's at max 25? This makes absolutely no sense. No one in their mid twenties is regularly drinking to excess and then being hungover for the majority of a week. If he was in his forties, at least I'd understand a couple days of feeling off. But early twenties? No way.

- contradictory information:
They call Mikayla "stupid" for not calling 911 before calling her mom, but a handful of pages before she told her mom she called 911 right before calling her. Also, Abe asks the flower shop clerk if Mikayla has a boyfriend, she says no, then like a page later he's pondering and wondering if she has a boyfriend or fiance. Her nurse introduces herself as Cynthia, then Mikayla asks if her name is Cynthia because her nametag says it. Cynthia calls Shelly at work to inform her that her daughter is waking up. Yet Shelly tells Mikayla she's using vacation, sick days, and comp time to keep money coming in. Which doesn't make sense because then she wouldn't have been at work. Mikayla asks her mom for her makeup kit, and her mom had no issue with it... but they lost everything in the fire. Which they explicitly state before and after this scene. Later on, her mom goes home to have a shower. This is days after the house fire. Then, days after that, she's leaving to go to work and says she needs to go and have a shower because she hasn't had one since the fire. Which would be like a week ago at this point, yet she's been going to work apparently, and also told Mikayla she was going home to shower days before.

As you can see, all of those issues made for disjointed and frustrating scenes, yet that wasn't even one of the main problems.

Thirdly, the author doesn't seem to know his audience or his characters. The writing feels stilted, and like its someone looking at characters they barely know, instead of hearing a strong voice throughout that pulls you into the story. It feels like this book is written by someone who doesn't read a lot, to get the feel for how a book should present to the reader, yet instead simply decided they knew how to write. The book is so much tell and not show. Days and weeks and years go by with a brief overview, so you never become attached to the characters. Yet a single week takes up half of the book. Two years of firefighter school and developing friendships were thrown into a couple of paragraphs, so you couldn't actually develop any feelings or strong ideas about personal depth on anyone. It felt like you were constantly in the "brief historic overview" part of the book, even 90 pages in. Not to mention, the POV is all over the place and leaves a wall between the reader and the characters. This makes the characters feel flat and two-dimensional throughout the whole book.  In fact, he never actually describes anyone in full. We get random characters' hair or eyes, but nothing else, and it's not consistent. We have no idea what Lamar, or Dennis or Luis, or anyone even looks like. I'm not even sure we ever hear a description of Abraham other than "tall" or "good looking." It's just a void of faceless names.

Fourthly, the book is deeply sexist. The female characters are classified by their assets, called "broads", them talking is a "gab fest", waitresses are called "honey" in casual conversation, and male police officers are "police" but female officers are "policewomen". It's very clear that the author does not have close and intimate conversations with women because he writes them terribly. We start the book off with Shelly, who is an awkward and unlikable character. Her friends are awful, and the way they communicate doesn't feel genuine. It feels like shoddy characateurs of how someone thinks women think and act, and the dialogue is astoundingly bad. He writes female characters' interactions as so forced. Constantly bursting into tears or laughter over the slightest thing, or seething with jealousy. The giving birth scene and how she and her friends reacted was so unrealistic. They don't even mention the mother holding the baby, looking at the baby, nothing. It's just all "hey girl, way to go," and then she's off to the hospital. At one point, a character offers to share makeup in the morning with another character. One is named Latisha, one Jenny. Not only is it disgusting and unhygienic, and no women would ever offer to do so, but those women are not going to have the same skin tone to be able to share makeup. Then we get adult Mikayla, who is a vastly unlikable character. She's jealous, flippant, rude, and childish. The author has written her like she's an unruly teen. Even her own mother said the staff would think she was an "intolerable witch" without Abe there, and she nods in agreement. Between her constant eye rolling and actively trying to make every scene uncomfortable (why do we hear so much of her talking about "taking dumps") I was completely not invested in her love story.

Then we get Luis, who is asked what first attracted him to his wife. Apparently, it was her ass. It hypnotized him. He literally says, "I have to be honest. it was her ass. One look and I was hypnotized. That ass was so intellectually and celestially complex, I didn't understand it at first. I was confused and frightened. It was like... a UFO. All I could do is stare in fear and wonder. Then, as I became more familiar with it and less fearful, I simply treated it like a Sony Playstation." And then everyone roared with laughter. Except Luis, he was confused because he was serious. Like, c'mon, I'm all for a funny quip, I've read a ton of misogynistic writers that could at least be humorous in their approach, or build characters that you begrudgingly adore so you can roll your eyes at shitty comments, but we barely know these characters except as drinking buddies and apparent friends. Then we get the dude talking about his wife like that, and it's immediately just distasteful and unnecessary. There's nothing interesting or likable about Luis. He's the stereotypical Mexican friend, and that's the only role he's given in this book.

Moving on, what is the authors obsession with everyone constantly drinking and doing so to excess? I was actually convinced the underlying theme had something to do with alcohol abuse. The story literally opens with Shelly finding out she's pregnant and then binge drinking with her friend. She gives birth after getting drunk at 8 months pregnant and goes into labour after her friend spills beer on her.  Every scene either mentions beer, going out for drinks, how they like to drink, or that they're hungover. The word "beer" alone is mentioned 102 times in 364 pages. They don't always talk about beer, though. Sometimes it's "drinks" sometimes they name the specific type of alcoholic drink, sometimes it's that they're hungover from the night before. It's actually unhinged how frequently it comes up and how often they mention driving drunk. Even the nurses in the hospital are constantly talking about taking her out for drinks, and Abe shows up to work hungover more than once, the first time he's still so out of it that he almost crashes his car into a coworker, but this is all brushed off as normal. It's unsettling.

Now, onto the "love story." There's no emotional intelligence in the writing. He fell in love with an unconscious girl after saving her from a house fire. Literally the same night. He then visits her while she's in a coma, saw her, and knew he was in love. She was, yet again, unconscious. He kissed her forehead and caressed her arm. Again, she's never even seen this man before. Then we just get consistent pressure from everyone around her that this dude they've either seen from afar or talked to once is perfect, and she needs to date him. Her mother mused she was falling in love with Abraham because she was smelling the flowers he left in her room. Mikayla then tells him she's fallen in love with him after a couple of days of knowing him, and he says he's in love with her too. In the most cringe-inducing dialogue I've ever read. Then the nicknames start. Honey, baby, kiddo (yes, this one made me gag), little big girl, baby doll, etc. They've known each other for a total of maybe 24 hours at this point. There is no chemistry, just awkwardly forced affection, and everyone around them acting like they're the most perfect couple to ever walk the earth. I cringed through all of their intimate dialogue, as it was awkward, stilted, and unnatural. They're two people who decided they loved each other within 3 days of meeting due to trauma and bs. They don't even know each other. The author is describing lust and infatuation, even a trauma bond. Not love. Then after entirely too long of the book being stuck in the hospital and hearing about Abe carrying her to the toilet to urinate and defecate (why does she not have access to crutches or a walker?) She goes home. Then there's weeks of recovery and a first date in a pub. Where Mikayla belly dances. To The Doors. Seductively. With everyone, including his parents, watching. Did you just cringe? Because I sure did. Then she binge drank so hard she puked and passed out in his guest room. And so their epic love story commences.

Lastly, and the worst part of it all, the dialogue. The author is frequently wordy to the point of nonsense, i.e., "He stared at her with a mocking look of anticipated surprise." More than once, I had to slow blink and ask myself why on earth he chose word salad instead of being clear. Not only was he unclear, with constant issues, as noted above, with editing, but everything is painfully cringy. I grimaced my way through love pronouncements, gagged through sex scenes, and yelled a horrified "Oh God, WHY?!" More than once.  James flirting? Disturbing: "You look like one of my cousins...and that is a compliment, I'll have you know." James Inner dialogue? Sounds like a 60 year old white man: "She wore an intense expression, like some sexy meter maid." Mikayla flirting? Abe brings her a milkshake, and she randomly calls this man she's known for a single night her "darling little big guy." There's also, at one point, a fart joke story, in an attempt at banter, that lasts three whole pages of text. Oh, and let's not forget food descriptions: "Mikayla inhaled the surrealistic meal in all its visual and aroma ectasy." She's talking about regular old Chinese food. The sex scenes, though? Had me horrified. I've read some poorly written scenes, but my God, they both surpassed anything I've ever read. Starting with them making out first thing in the morning without brushing her teeth, after she puked her guts out before bed. Continuing with lines such as "Abe felt a beautiful sensation run through his penis as he stroked Mikaylas hair." Like, no, that isn't hot. The sex scenes were the most awkward and full-body cringe inducing scenes I have ever read. In the second scene, he has ghost dream sex and at one point, she tickles him. He yells and tells her to be careful, and she says  "oh poor baby, did I hurt his little pee?" Like WHAT?! I don't even know what to do with that. Then, of course, he tells her mom next time they hang out, and she asks if they made love in his dream. Also, WHY?! WHY IS THIS SCENE HAPPENING?!

In the end, I was so worn down by the bad dialogue, horrible ending, awkward and strange scenes, and being beaten over the head with exactly how she'll return, that the last 15% of the book I just burned through without really caring about how poorly it was done. Although the random gay jokes were wholly unnecessary, constant, and distasteful. Everything else became a repetitious blur until they hit the rushed, awkward, cheesy ending. Where almost 50 year old Abe now gets a fresh new 20 year old to wife up.

I wouldn't recommend anyone read this book. I honestly think the author needs to trash it and rewrite the entire thing with fresh eyes, while he takes some time reading other novels in the genre he wishes to write in.

*******

Thank you, NetGalley, and 4Wills Publishing - for the digital ARC copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.