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Review: Once More With Feeling. By Megan Crane.

08/12/2012

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‘She's suffered the very worst of betrayals. And now Sarah's facing a divorce she never expected. With Christmas round the corner, what better time to re-evaluate her life? As she reconsiders every choice she's made, she starts to wonder if her life was so perfect after all. This winter, lose yourself in Sarah's world of unmade decisions, lost friends and old flames...’

When seemingly happily married lawyer Sarah discovers her husband, Tim, has been having an affair with her sister, her perfect little world falls apart. Forced into change, Sarah makes herself go over all the decisions she’s made that have led to her being in her current situation, and comes to some surprising conclusions.

Megan Crane’s writing is very intelligent. She cleverly allows Sarah, and the reader, to discover the truth behind her seemingly idyllic life and marriage. What’s so brilliant is that Sarah really has no idea that pretty much everything in her life is a compromise, and all because she gave up what she really wanted years before.

I liked Sarah immediately, and her character continued to grow on me even more as the novel progressed. She was a complex heroine, and her reactions to the situations she finds herself on are completely honest. She doesn’t often make the most sensible decisions and she behaves badly at times, but in a very understandable way. These flaws seemed to make Sarah a very rounded protagonist, and fascinating to read about. I was extremely indignant on her behalf when it came to how her family treated her, it was quite appalling!

To begin with, I wasn’t completely enamoured by Sarah’s love interest, Alec – he seemed to take the whole sexy, brooding male thing a little too far, and I found it hard to imagine how Sarah and Alec could have had a relationship together. However, he soon won me over, and I’m now a firm Alec fan.

Crane’s style is light and very readable; she manages to maintain a good pace to the novel throughout, and I was impressed and captivated by her clever storyline. Sarah’s plight had me gripped: I loved following her on her journey to reassess her marriage, and how she was going to move forward and into the life she wanted, which turns out to be very different to the one she currently has.

4 stars

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Review: I Love the 80s. By Megan Crane.

23/02/2012

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Review: I Love the 80s. By Megan Crane.

23/02/2012

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_ ‘Jenna Jenkins was getting married to her long-term boyfriend, Adam, and she was sure her life was all coming together. Until Adam left her for a twenty-three-year-old yoga instructor. To ease the pain, Jenna threw herself into her teenage memories of the late, great Tommy Seer, killed when his car crashed off a bridge in 1987, when she was just twelve, and focusing on the man who has been - and always will be - the true love of her life, however worrying that may seem to her best friend, Aimee. One day, working late, or thinking about Tommy at her office after dark, a freak accident sends Jenna back to 1987. It's a few short months before Tommy will die and Jenna's job is apparently working as his assistant. But Tommy is not the guy she imagined. He's mean and rude and obnoxious. But he is still deliciously good-looking. When Tommy takes her into his confidence, she starts to see the real him beneath the image and finds herself more in love than ever. He suspects someone is trying to kill him - and she knows it won't be long before they succeed. Why is she here? Is she meant to save his life? But how can she without revealing the bizarre, unbelievable truth’.

Jenna Jenkins loves everything about the eighties: the clothes, the music, the hair, and especially pop star Tommy Seer, who died in 1987 when he drove his car off a bridge. As Jenna’s life fails to inspire her, she spends more and more time immersed in her obsession with her favourite decade. One day, an accident in work sends Jenna back in time to 1987, just a few months before her beloved Tommy will die. Jenna now works as Tommy’s assistant, but whilst he’s very handsome, he’s nothing like she thought he would be; in fact he’s generally mean and unpleasant. He does, however, believe that someone is trying to kill him. Jenna now sees it as her destiny to uncover who would want him dead and save Tommy’s life.

Although I was born in 1980, and so was a little young to fully experience all that the eighties had to offer, this book still provided plenty of opportunity to reminisce. It was fascinating to have a picture painted of how New York has changed; it’s certainly been cleaned up a lot! From other things I’ve read I believe Crane’s descriptions to be pretty accurate, she’d obviously done her research.

I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Jenna at the beginning of the book, but agreed with her friend that she’d taken her obsession too far. Although Jenna is in her 30s, she acts very immaturely, like a teenager in many ways; this was a little infuriating. However, she does change during the story, and manages to put her obsession with the 80s and Tommy Seer into perspective.

Crane really manages to tap into every girl’s love of a rock star, especially one who’s a little grumpy to begin with! Tommy was so cool; it was easy to see why Jenna had such a crush on him, bad boys appeal to even the best of us! He made a good male lead, and I enjoyed his changing attitude towards Jenna as he gradually learnt to trust her.

In general, I either love or hate books about time travel. The complexities behind Jenna’s journey through time weren’t really explored as deeply as I felt it could have been, but then I suppose the point is what happens to Jenna in the 80s, not necessarily how she gets there.

The storyline was a little predictable, with a few holes if you looked close enough, but this was real light-hearted escapism, letting us remember our wildest dreams growing up as we fell in love with whichever pop star was currently in vogue. There was plenty of romance, fun, and enjoyable eighties references, which made this story stand out from the crowd. This was my first Megan Crane book, and I’d definitely be interested in reading her others.

3 stars
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