The Pandemic Was My Groundhog Day

Picture the scene. It’s 2020 and I’m locked down. I’ve got three kids, two in nappies, one not keen on being home schooled, a husband working away as a key worker, relatives wanting me to do Zoom quizzes, 163 WhatsApp threads and a book deadline. We don’t go anywhere. We wake, we work, we play, we laugh, we scroll, we cry, we eat, we sleep. And we do it again the next day.

I was living groundhog day.

I needed escapism. And I needed to remember that I loved the man I kept passing out next door every night. I knew then I wanted to write a great love story – an extraordinary love between two ordinary people: Emma and Dan. A love that had been a little forgotten in the middle of a busy life. A love that is suddenly brought sharply into focus when the very worst happens…

Maybe Next Time was born.

It’s a manic Monday for Emma. A completely normal Monday for Emma – literary agent, partner, mother, committee member, colleague, friend, sister-in-law, daughter, dog mama and more. Her phone is pinging, her kids are surly, one has lost her blazer, Dan appears to be in a bad mood. She hasn’t got time to drill down. She tears through her day putting out fires, her brain full of the next thing. And that night she discovers why her husband is upset. And that night she rows with him. And that night… he dies.

And she wakes the next day. Only it’s not Tuesday. It’s Monday again. And Dan is lying next to her. And now Emma has a chance to try and change her day, change everything. She has a chance to find out what is happening to the people in her life. She has a chance to reflect on how she is living her life. And she has a chance to save the love of her life.

Part mystery, part love story I wanted to write this book as a reminder of the many ways women are pulled in a hundred different directions. The many ways we push the things and the people we love down the list so that we can tick off other things. I wanted to see what would have to change to make me stop, to make me reflect and to make me change.

I hope you love Maybe Next Time. I hope it makes you stop, pause, gasp, cry buckets, laugh and celebrate the loves in your own life.