459. Maybe in Another Life
Rating: ☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by: Drue Emerson
Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Genre: Fiction, Romance
342 pages, published July 7, 2015
Reading Format: Book
Summary
29 year old Hannah Martin is at a crossroads in her life. Spending her twenties bouncing from city to city and job to job, she returns to her hometown of Los Angeles to be close to her best friend Gabby. Shortly after relocating, she meets up with ex-boyfriend Ethan at a bar with friends. At the end of the evening Hannah has to decide whether to go home with Ethan or not. At this point, the book follows the two differing paths that her life will take depending on that fateful decision.
Quotes
“I know there may be universes out there where I made different choices and they led me somewhere else, led me to someone else. And my heart breaks for every single version of me that didn’t end up with you.”
“Life is long and full of an infinite number of decisions. I have to think that the small ones don’t matter, that I’ll end up where I need to end up no matter what I do.”
“When you sit there and wish things had happened differently, you can’t just wish away the bad stuff. You have to think about all the good stuff you might lose, too. Better just to stay in the now and focus on what you can do better in the future.”
“That’s what you do when you want something. You don’t look for reasons why it won’t work. You look for reasons why it will.”
“I think I have to believe that life will work out the way it needs to. If everything that happens in the world is just a result of chance and there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, that’s just too chaotic for me to handle. I’d have to go around questioning every decision I’ve ever made, every decision I will ever make. If our fate is determined with every step we take . . . it’s too exhausting. I’d prefer to believe that things happen as they are meant to happen.”
“Fate or not, our lives are still the results of our choices.”
“It doesn’t matter if we don’t mean to do the things we do. It doesn’t mean if it was an accident or a mistake. It doesn’t even matter if we think this is all up to fate. Because regardless of our destiny, we still have to answer for our actions. We make choices, big and small, every day of our lives, and those choices have consequences.”
“I’m just going to do my best and live under the assumption that if there are things in this life that we are supposed to do, if there are people in this world we are supposed to love, we’ll find them. In time. The future is so incredibly unpredictable that trying to plan for it is like studying for a test you’ll never take. I’m OK in this moment.”
“If you love someone, if you think you could make them happy for the rest of your life together, then nothing should stop you. You should be prepared to take them as they are and deal with the consequences. Relationships aren’t neat and clean. They’re ugly and messy, and they make almost no sense except to the two people in them. That’s what I think. I think if you truly love someone, you accept the circumstances; you don’t hide behind them.”
“You can only forgive yourself for the mistakes you made in the past once you know you’ll never make them again.”
“You don’t need to find the perfect thing all the time. Just find one that works, and go with it.”
“It’s very easy to rationalize what you’re doing when you don’t know the faces and the names of the people you might hurt. It’s very easy to choose yourself over someone else when it’s an abstract.”
“I don’t believe that being in love absolves you of anything. I no longer believe that all’s fair in love and war. I’d go so far as to say your actions in love are not an exception to who you are. They are, in fact, the very definition of who you are.”
My Take
Maybe in Another Life is the first book that I have read by Taylor Jenkins Reid and it was a fun chicklit escape. In fact, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it and how quickly I sped through it. It made me think a bit about the role that both chance and choice play in our life. While not novel, the characters and plot more than hold your interest until the two satisfying conclusions.
