Description and cover: cozy magical realism romance. Actual content: a mild speculative thriller with a touch of a love story. I'm uncertain why it’s billed as a romance, but the story is solid. I believe it would perform better if marketed accurately.

"The One Before the One" is told from multiple perspectives across various timelines. It's confusing, intriguing, and melancholic. The plot is extremely easy to spoil, so aside from not expecting a romance, I suggest diving in without any preconceived notions!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

A second-chance romance with a time-travel twist, this novel throws Liv into the ultimate pre-wedding dilemma: rewrite the past or stick with the life she’s built? Packed with heartache, hope, and a love triangle that will have you screaming at the pages, it’s a rollercoaster of ‘what ifs’ and impossible choices. Perfect for fans of tearjerkers with a side of destiny, this one will keep you flipping pages, early contender for my favourite book of the year.

What an enticing new novel from Emma Cooper!! The description of this book does not do it justice- magical realism coupled with secrets and mysteries made for a really compelling story! It’s a quick read with just the right amount of twists and turns. It took a minute for me to really get into the story, but once I did, I was hooked! I really liked the characters and the storyline, but some parts felt really rushed while others felt dragged out. I was really happy with the ending, though!

Thank you NetGalley and Boldwood Books for this ARC!

A lovely page turner ❤️ it's more than a normal romance book.... there is a little time travelling in it but don't let that put you off!
I went into the book not knowing much about it just that I enjoyed Emma's previous books. There are some twists and turns that I didn't see coming.
Loved it .

I enjoyed the time travel and mystery of this story and it definitely had me wondering what was going on. I think I didn’t connect to any of the characters and that is what kept it from a higher rating but the premise of the story was really good.

A magical realism story where you'll never see the ending coming

Thank you Boldwood Books and NetGalley for giving me this arc to review!

I absolutely devoured this book as I loved the plot so much. The way you feel towards certain characters in this book changes so much from beginning to end and I just really did not see it coming. It has constant twist and turns that shock you and keep you invested to see what happens at the end. I will never stop recommending this book!

An amazing premise of a novel, Liv's boyfriend disappears 7 years ago. On the morning of her wedding to James (who happens to be Kit's brother), Liv is transported back to the week before Kit disappeared, ultimately giving her the potential answer of why he disappeared.
Part of the book feels slow, others feel rushed like when Liv and James got together, I felt as a secondary character, James deserved more air time.
Throughout the novel, you're rooting for Liv, her emotions are like a rollercoaster and this is beautifully depicted by the author.
Thanks to Net galley for the advanced copy..

Rating: ★★★✩✩ (3.5/5)

The One Before the One has such an interesting premise—a mix of time travel, romance, and second chances. Liv lost her boyfriend, Kit, in a tragic hiking accident seven years ago. Just when she’s about to marry his brother, James, she wakes up in the past—six days before Kit disappears. Now, she has to decide: does she try to change fate, or does she just relive those last few days with him before returning to her future?

The book has some beautiful writing, and Liv’s emotions feel real. Her confusion, love, and heartbreak come through strongly. The time-travel aspect isn’t explained, but it still makes sense in the story. Kit and Liv’s moments together are touching, and Ava, one of the side characters, was a great addition—I only wish she had more to do!

However, the pacing is uneven. Some scenes drag on, while others (especially with James) feel too short. For someone Liv is supposed to love enough to marry, James barely gets any time in the story. On the other hand, Kit is everywhere, to the point that it almost feels like the book forgets Liv has another love interest. There are also a few unresolved plot points that left me wanting more closure.

Overall, this is an emotional read with a strong concept but could have been more balanced. If you like time-slip romances with a focus on the past, you might enjoy this one!

Thank you, NetGalley and Boldwood Books, for the eARC. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

Emma has an amazing ability to grab you. Each chapter ends with the perfect hook that keeps you from pulling away from reading and the story itself is so full of drama and mystery that it lends itself to a game you want to get involved in. While I enjoyed her writing, I must admit that by her second half the story started to lose me. The big revelations didn't convince me for the road we traveled and that ending left me with a bittersweet taste.
It's a book I recommend if you're in the mood for a simple story that you just want to enjoy without asking too many questions.


Emma tiene una habilidad para atraparte asombrosa. Cada capítulo termina con el gancho perfecto que te impide apartarte de la lectura y la historia en sí está tan llena de drama y misterio que se presta para un juego en el que te quieres involucrar. Aunque disfruté de su escritura, debo de admitir que para su segunda parte la historia comenzó a perderme. Las grandes revelaciones no me convencieron para el camino que recorrimos y ese final me dejó un sabor agridulce.
Es un libro que recomiendo si tienes ganas de una historia sencilla que solo quieres disfrutar sin hacer muchas preguntas.

The One Before The One by Emma Cooper is an emotional, heartwarming, and beautifully written story about love, fate, and second chances. The characters are so well developed that they feel like real people, and the mix of humor and heartbreak makes for an unforgettable read. Cooper’s writing is captivating, and the story kept me hooked from start to finish. If you love contemporary romance with depth and emotion, (and a little bit of magic) this one is a must-read!

Not sure what u was expecting, the cover had me leaning more towards a standard chic lit type book but this was an unexpected surprise. Won’t give any spoilers away, but overall i really enjoyed it and liked the different elements it had!

This story was absolutely captivating, taking me on an emotional rollercoaster from start to finish. It shattered my heart and then pieced it back together beautifully. I'm eagerly looking forward to diving into more works by Emma Cooper.

I highly recommend it!

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!

#TheOneBeforetheOne #NetGalley

I really enjoyed this one! It has an interesting premise that I felt was done well.

What I liked about it:
-The premise - like I said, it was interesting and had me hooked from the synopsis! I thought that this was going to be a messier story than it was but it wasn't really. I like the way that the plot unfolded.
-The pacing of this book was easy and Liv's parts flowed together well (more on that below). I felt like I flew through the last half of the book because I just needed to know more.
-The ending was done well. I felt like I really was Liv because I got such a calm sense of closure with all of the choices she made and the events that unfolded.

What I didn't like:
-I think the timeline switching between Liv and James was meant to be mysterious and have the reader guessing what was happening, but it was overall just a bit confusing to me. Eventually I got it, but I felt like James' parts pulled me out of the story that I was so invested in when reading Liv's parts.
-The first little bit was hard because I didn't get the love she had for James and it felt like everything was too much about Kit. However I did get a better feel for their relationship as the story went on.

Overall I really enjoyed this book! It was a lot less 'fluffier' than I anticipated it to be, but that ended up still being really good. It has a magical element of time travel which I always tend to enjoy. This was a great read while I was cooped up inside during a February snow storm!

In a Nutshell: A romantic mystery with timeslip elements. Fabulous potential, but the execution didn’t work well for me. However, to readers who enjoy emotional dramas, this book might work better. Mine is an outlier opinion.

Plot Preview:
Seven years ago, the love of Liv’s life, her boyfriend Kit, disappeared while on a hike. It took her many years to get over her grief. Now thirty-two, Liv has moved on, found love with James, and is ready to take the next step of their relationship. However, on the day of their wedding, when Liv opens the door of her hotel room, she finds herself in the old flat she shared with Kit. Worse, she has somehow travelled back in time, to six days before Kit’s mysterious disappearance. Has Liv been given an opportunity to find out what happened to Kit? Perhaps to save his life? But if she does end up successful, how will it affect her future? Should she go back to the one – James, or the one before the one, Kit?
The story comes to us in a dual first-person perspective.

I am not much into romances these days. However, the time travel element of this book made me curious. Unfortunately, the trope didn’t work well for me. This is a tough book to review without going into spoilers, so I will keep things mostly vague.

Bookish Yays:
😍 Rarely does a book cause me to go “Wait, What?!” with a twist. This book managed it.
😍 The title – quite clever.
😍 The descriptions of the location – beautiful.
😍 Mac. Great character. Would have loved to see more of him.

Bookish Mixed Bags:
😐 James is Kit’s brother. (Not a spoiler as this is revealed in the very first chapter.) I usually avoid such triangles because it can get predictably awkward. The book handles it fairly well at the start, but later reactions seem unrealistic.
😐 Romance fans might be disappointed at how little romance there is in this book. It has much more emotional drama than romance. But I didn’t pick this up for the romance anyway, so not a major problem for me.
😐 Too many secrets and miscommunication. Works in some cases, annoys the rest of the time.

Bookish Nays:
😒 The time travel content: Not Groundhog Day, but Timeslip. Cause: unexplained. Purpose: Unexplained. Impact on the future: None. So I didn’t see the point of this timeslip at all.
😒 Liv’s first-person POV gets very repetitive. Loads of inner rambling on the same topics over and over. I was especially fed up of her repeated comments on her weight and body size. She's also inconsistent as a narrator, constantly contradicting her earlier words and actions. Plus, she breaks the fourth wall in the initial chapters and speaks to the readers directly, which didn’t make sense for the plot at all.
😒 This sentence: "I would drink his blood if I could…" – What the heck!? In what world is it okay to say such a thing to express the extent of your love for someone? (And no, no one was a vampire or a vampire fan in this book.)
😒 The two love interests. While I did like one much better than the other, both took such stupid decisions that it was tough to root for either.
😒 The love triangle. One half of the book is heavily tilted towards one character and then it switches to the other side. The balance is missing.
😒 The remaining secondary characters except for Mac – bare minimum detailing, though a couple of them had great potential.
😒 The use of the past timeline relies a lot on Liv’s crystal-clear memory of every day in that week from seven years ago. Who can have such incredible recollection skills that even include knowledge of what was eaten all those years ago on that specific day?
😒 The reason for Kit’s disappearance. It fell quite flat after all the build-up. Utterly dissatisfying!
😒 Everyone is a bit too forgiving after the above reveal, which is unrealistic. There should have been a lot more anger along with the relief.
😒 Many loopholes in logic, especially connected to Kit’s disappearance. One thing I simply didn’t understand was why Liv didn’t use social media to look for the people who could provide her with some answers. The past was in 2016, not the pre-Internet/SM age! It takes hardly a second to click on “View Profile” from FB Messenger once you see a message.
😒 The ending went the only way it could have, no surprises there. Plus, it had too much of an infodump.
😒 The epilogue was too perfect for such a plot.


All in all, I expected a greater emotional impact from this book, but as I couldn’t connect with any of the characters nor empathise with their quandary, I was disappointed. To me, the blurb is much stronger than the execution.
That said, the other reviews and ratings clearly prove that I am an outlier in my opinion. I’m often a Grinch when it comes to melodramatic plots as well as mysteries, so it would be better if you read other opinions and take a more educated call on this novel.
Recommended to those who enjoy emotional women’s fiction with a strong element of mystery. Not to be picked up if you want a time-travel or groundhog day story that ends with a learning experience for the characters.

2 stars.

My thanks to Boldwood Books for providing the DRC of “The One Before the One” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn’t work out better.

What a fantastic book! I could not put it down, the storyline was amazing and kept me so engaged throughout. I love how we kept finding out more and more about Kit, James and Liv. I was constantly guessing what happened to Kit but I never guessed right!

I would definitely recommend this book.

I UGLY CRIED AND BAWLED AT THIS BOOK OMG I LOVED IT SO MUCH!!! AND LET ME TELL YOU THE OTHRT PERSONS POV SURPRISED THE F OUTTA ME!!! go in blind- PLS you’ll thank me, the perfect mix of love, angst, second guessing/choices, finding what you want and seeing things for what that are - not through rose colored glasses!!!!

all opinions and reviews are my own - arc provided by netgalley and publisher for my honest opinion.

This book is so beautiful it pulled me in and under and I experienced every emotion that Liv felt. The loss, the confusion, the anger, the heartbreak. The plot twist was totally unexpected! At first I thought the disappearance narrative was Kit's story, meanwhile it was James. Even the birth certificate discovery at first I thought it was Kit, then I realized it was James. Just makes me realize that things unfold as it should, no matter how painful or difficult it is at the time. But I'm so glad that not only Liv but James could have a second chance at love with each other.

This was a beautifully written book! Such a unique concept that makes you wonder… how far would you go to save someone you love?

What a journey with Liv, Kit, & James.

Emma Cooper has written a beautiful, emotional enemies-to-lovers novel that has characters overcoming major obstacles. On the day of her wedding Liv is suddenly taken back 7 years time. Will she be able to change the past? What truths will she uncover? What is Kit hiding?

I loved every second of this book, but especially the journey of Liv & James' relationship. And I can't forget to mention Mac and how he was redeemed. The villain of the story being Kit & James' mother. I do wish there was more there calling her out for the way she treated her son. Why was Kit always hailed the hero?

𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐨 Boldwood Books 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐀𝐑𝐂 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰.

4.5 stars rounded up

This was a quick read that kept me engaged from the first page to the last. I enjoyed the time-travel aspect and loved all the twists and turns the story took. The characters are well-developed, and I loved the way their faults were explored with some very relevant topics being covered.

A great beach read, or a perfect cosy read on a winter's day. I'll definitely be recommending this book to others and look forward to reading more by this author.

Thank you to NetGalley, Boldwood Books, and the author for an ARC for review. All opinions are my own and my review is left voluntarily.