Member Review

Cover Image: In Another Life

In Another Life

Pub Date:

Review by

Alice B, Reviewer

First of all, thanks to NetGalley and Meghan from Wednesday Books for sending me and eARC in exchange for a honest review.
You have to know English isn’t my first language, so feel free to correct me if I make some mistakes while writing this review.


After her adoptive parents' divorce, Chloe Holden moves with her mother to Joyful, Texas. She has always known about her adoption when she was only three years old, but still her parents' split-up feels like she's reliving the trauma of being ripped away from everything she's ever known as familiar.
It doesn't help that her father is dating a woman who's not even ten years older than Chloe and that her mother's cancer is maybe in remission.

After a weekend spent to El Paso, Chloe's father is bringing her back to Joyful and once they stopped to a gas station, in a rage due to an argument between the two of them, Chloe bumps into a boy. When Chloe says she's sorry, the boy first is confused and then is glaring at her. Chloe is even more perplexed when the boy tells her to stay away and to drop whatever it is the thing she has planned to do - but what does it mean?

Over the years, Cash Colton moved through different foster families - now it's the Fullers' turn. With a past full of mistakes that makes him feel guilty about, due to a father who taught him to cheat, to steal and to take advantage of those vulnerable, Cash knows a con when he sees one. The Fullers lost a child fifteen years earlier and never forgot her, so Cash doesn't want to see them hurt.
When he sees this girl with a striking resemblance with the age progression photo of Emily Fuller, Cash is sure the girl is in town to con the Fullers. So he starts to dig online and in Chloe's past, set to discover what her intentions are.


Cash gets close to Chloe to figure out who she really is and if she's sincere about it.
It irked me the way too fast they start liking each other - even more at the speed they confess their feelings to each other. First, Cash's intentions have nothing to do with Chloe as a person with her own feelings and thoughts - let's not talk about the way he stares at her bordering on stalking. Second, they don't know each other enough - I mean, Chloe pours out her problems about her family and he clams up without sharing anything about himself, but she doesn't know he approached her with a lie.

Then things start to go in the right direction - and with the right timing.
They both suffered - Cash because of his father and Chloe because she has always felt a void, even though her parents love her so much and she had a life filled with so much happiness until her parents' divorce. Now she's remembering a voice telling her her mom and dad didn't want her anymore, that's why she was being adopted.
They lean on each other and that instant-like at first didn't sit well with me and I feared an insta-love, but that softens the more they spend time together and know each other better.

Nothing ominous or intimidating happens in the first half of the book. On a second thought, I think is better this way because you need that time to put Chloe in the right mental condition to want answers and the truth - a truth she's afraid will hurt every party involved no matter what.
Things start moving in the second half, when someone gets word Chloe is asking around about her biological parents. And no, that someone doesn't like it very much - here my anxiety went spiking.

I appreciated the double point of view - Chloe's is in first person and Cash's is in third person, so this gives us the oppotunity to know their thoughts and their lives more closely.
I read an eARC copy, so I'm sure a couple of little things will be fixed - I'm especially talking about a blank space signaling the change in the point of view: since the narrative goes on without interruption inside a chapter, I was a little confused the first time it happened because nothing prepared me to the change. Then I became accostumed to it, but still.

Even if my initial expectations led me to believe the mystery aspect would've been bigger, I'm satisfied about the way the author took her time to explore a topic like adoption and the consequently perpetual conflict caused by the abandonment. Because Chloe loves her parents and doesn't want to hurt them, feeling disloyal just hinting about her biological parents. Because the Fullers are still searching their daughter and that pain never faded. Because there are different kinds of love and affection that create a chaos of emotions, fears and conflicts - because, as inevitable as it is, someone is gonna end up hurt and it's not fair for anyone of the party involved.
And, about Cash, the author tackles the way foster kids are judged in the wrong way based on their parents.

I liked it and sure, you can guess the direction it's going to take if you read other books on the subject, but still I recommend it.
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