 |
If you had the opportunity to go back in time and change your past, what would you do differently? That is the exact situation that Anaya finds herself in when one of her patients at the retirement home she practices at gifts her with a watch that gives new meaning to the definition of free will.
During her senior year eighteen years ago, Anaya dropped out of high school. Now, presented with the opportunity to return to her teenage years with the mind of her adult self, she makes the decision to stay in school and go to college immediately following graduation. She has lived most of her life with a mental illness that threatened her relationships and even her own safety at times, so she is also determined to attack her condition head on the second time around. But in going back and making this one momentous change, how much of her future will be altered, and will it affect the lives of her loved ones as well?
Creating a vivid world for Anaya in which she sets out to right her wrongs, the author creatively uses the point of view of a thirty-five-year-old woman to tell the story of a seventeen-year-old girl who must take advantage of her second chance in the past before her time runs out in the present. Schuilling confronts the pain of living with regret tenaciously, which is something that readers will be able to connect with instantly. The author is also consciously reflective in taking a deep dive into the stigma that once encompassed mental health and the subsequent evolution of its treatment. Readers will be challenged to think about the decisions they have made in their own lives while winding through time travel in a unique, suspenseful, and dramatic way.