I loved Webb’s memoir/meditation ‘How Not to be a Boy’ about family, community and growing up, so a huge thank you to #Canongate and #NetGalley for a free download of ‘Come Again’, Webb’s debut novel due to be published in April 2020. Kate Marsden met love of her life Luke on the first night of Freshers’ Week at York Uni twenty eight years ago. Dying in his 40s of a malignant brain tumour sends Kate into free-fall. She almost fatally neglects her health, her flat, her friends. And then she has a dream which transports her back to that fateful night. From middle age, she reassesses this godlike creature. And their lives are changed, forever. Fabulous ending...let it surprise you. Web recreates the student scene wonderfully, from the music (REM) to the wobbly, sticky tables in the SU bar, impulsive gatherings in impossibly small study bedrooms, to the random formation of the oddest groups of friends. If you enjoyed ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ or’Truly, Madly, Deeply’, you will romp through this. Pretty unlikely contemporary thriller sections weaken the overall impact though.

A thoroughly enjoyable read. I had hesitated to read as I worried it might be heartbreaking, but if anything it is the opposite - a life affirming and quirky read with some strange twists. I was laughing a lot at this book even as it dealt with grief in truthful ways. Like a lot of high concept stories the ending needed to work, and this one did for me. Things got perhaps a bit too silly for me as it ramped up to the climax but things were brought back to a nice conclusion. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Can you fall in love for the first time twice? Kate and Luke fell in love on their first day of University 19 years ago. They've been married for the last ten. Except, Luke died suddenly, and Kate's left feeling alone and desperate. She decides to end it all, but instead she wakes up back in her 19 year old body in York University, 1992. She meets Luke again and tries to warn him about the tumour already growing in his brain that will one day suddenly kill him. The first two thirds of Come Again were good, I enjoyed getting to know Kate and meeting her friends at University. I felt the first third was written in a really heartfelt way, and I felt very emotionally invested in Kate's grief. The second part when we were in the past was again well written and the characters were developed. Unfortunately, the last third really let the book down for me. Kate comes back to the present time and ends up in a high speed car chase. This just seemed really unnecessary, yes it did fit the plot but I felt the car chase was purely there as a plot device. There are so many other ways that a plot device could have been used to move the story on that would have fitted better with the existing book. The final part that annoyed me was the response to the time travel. Kate went back in time, changed the past, and then came back to the unchanged timeline- this is absolutely fine if the time travel was a dream or something. However, she then discovers that things have changed in the present- she had managed to help Luke- but all her friends are also well aware that she'd a depressed widow who was married to Luke.... confused yet? I really didn't understand the ending. I think Webb suddenly realised that he had all these plot lines to tie up, but he just didn't quite manage to do it effectively in my opinion. Overall, I gave Come Again 3*, its a nice feel good book, good for fans of the Time Travellers Wife or The Flat Share. Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was drawn in by the description of this book. Unfortunately, it lured me in under false pretences. I wasn’t looking for a story about a spy, or USB sticks! The period of time where Kate goes back in time to fix Luke (as described in the blurb) is probably about 10% of this story. I was so disappointed! I didn’t really like Kate as a character. She was very believable at the beginning, mired in grief, but I found her behaviour towards the end very uncharacteristic. She was so deeply in love with Luke- why would one small trip to the past enable her to move on? I found the spy stuff pretty dull- it’s just not a genre I enjoy. I’m giving 3 stars, simply because I very much enjoyed the little twist at the end. I’d like to read a follow up that explains what happens next, but without the inclusion of Russian gangsters, please! Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for my copy of this book.

This was something of a tale of two halves in many respects, as the feel of the narration in the ‘now’ and ‘then’ parts of the book were poles apart. It took me a while to get into as I found the ‘now’ parts harder to follow due to the extremities of Kate’s working life however her mood and coping mechanisms for dealing with her husbands death were well depicted. I got more into this when we went back in time to ‘then’, I thought this bit was really well thought out and the way Kate had to try to edit all she said and did combined with the 90s topical references worked well, I actually found ‘then’ more believable than ‘now’ strangely! Overall this has an element of sadness, humour, farce and love and if you don’t mind a fiction book that demands you suspend reality this is a very quirky read.