Time of My Life by Allison Winn Scotch

Do you ever feel like you discovered an author? Like no one else knew who she was except for you and then suddenly EVERYONE knows who she is and she’s getting bigger book deals and movie deals and you get this tiny sense of pride when you think, “Hey, I knew she was going to be a big deal!” Well that’s how I feel about Allison Winn Scotch. I started following her blog, Ask Allison, right around the time she was working on her first book, THE DEPARTMENT OF LOST AND FOUND, the story of a young woman battling cancer. I really enjoyed that book because although it could have held you emotionally hostage and then left you feeling miserable, it didn’t. Scotch gave her readers hope and it worked.

Allison’s newest book, TIME OF MY LIFE, is a much more mystical tale because it involves time travel. Now don’t go thinking it is a sci-fi pick because it certainly is not. That is one of the things I love about this book, that it takes you into the world of the imaginary but is very real and very honest. Here’s the description:

From the outside view, Jillian Westfield has a pitch-perfect life. Her cherubic 18-month old daughter, her wildly successful investment banker husband, a four bedroom, five bath, lemon scented home with landscaping and neighbors to match. But that doesn’t stop her from mulling over the past, from pushing away the what if’s that haunt her when she allows them to seep into her consciousness. What if she hadn’t married Henry? What if she hadn’t abandoned her job at the first sign of pregnancy? What if she had never broken up with Jackson. What if she answered her mother’s letter. Because underneath the shiny veneer of her life, Jill is wandering around in floundering marriage, brewing resentment and an air of discontendness.

But after an ethereal massage in which her therapist releases her blocked chi, she wakes up to discover that she’s been whisked seven years back, back to her old life, her old self, back to the moments in which she made decisions that charted her future course. And now that she’s back, she’s faced with the same roadblocks and obstacles, only this time, armed with hindsight, she can choose a different path and finally lay to rest all of her “what ifs.”

Time of My Life is much more than a story about a real life desperate housewife. Instead, it speaks to so many of our tiny, lingering doubts, the same doubts that send us googling old friends and exes or wistfully pulling out pictures of days gone by. And through Jillian’s journey, in which she rediscovers the mother who abandoned her, reacquaints herself with the strengths she once deemed important, and may literally rewrite her future, we all get a chance to peek inside the windows of our own “what ifs,” and consider if the path we took was the one that has granted us the most happiness.

This story is insightful and entertaining. It poses a lot of questions that women everywhere can identify with and it allows you to see what would happen if a different path was chosen. Fans of the television show Felicity will also feel a pang of nostalgia for the final season when Felicity took her own journey back in time. I can’t wait to see the movie version of this delightful tale!