Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

Alex Dean is living free and somewhat irresponsibly as a young adult in London during the year 1995. Him and his girlfriend, Holly, are head over heels for each other and Alex has earned a spot to attend Cambridge University. However, a night out changes his life when he falls and drowns in the Thames.

Once Alex wakes up the next day, he doesn't know where he is, nor does he know what year he is living in. He suddenly realizes once he looks in the mirror that he is older and living a life that has resulted from poor decisions. The rest of the story outlines Alex jumping to different points throughout his life, eventually understanding what happened to him at the Thames and what has happened throughout his life since 1995. He realizes that good decisions beget good decisions, which has a profound effect on his life going forward.

I'm not someone that typically gravitates toward sci-fi and fantasy, but this book's synopsis interested me. I'm very glad that I decided to pick this book to read. There were many themes and messages that resonated with me, including self-awareness, mental illness, and self-improvement. I appreciated the many thoughtful messages that the author was trying to convey throughout this story. There were more than a couple of scenes that made me verklempt.

My only criticism is that the story was a little boring and failed to keep my interest at times. I was slightly confused as well about what was going on with Alex Dean, but the author was able to tie this in at the end of the story.

This is a great story not only with fantastical elements, but also a great redemptive arc for the main character and themes that will tug at the reader's heartstrings.

This was one of most anticipated reads for 2024 and it didn’t disappoint me at all. I kept giving my kindle a hug. I didn’t want the book to end so I tried to read it slowly. But that didn’t last

Changing to a new day each day sometime in his life, he tries to figure it out or try to go back to his old life. I loved the theories of what time is and how it works. Those were some of my favourite parts of the book.

I can’t wait to get a hold of a physical copy of this. This is my favourite book of the year.

Thank you to NetGalley, Harlequin Trade Publishing and James Goodhand for an eARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.

After an accident and near death experience, Alex Dean finds himself living his life out of order. Waking up in different years and points of his life, Alex must try to change the past in order to prevent tragedy in his future.

Time travel is one of my favorite tropes and I will automatically read any book featuring it. While this wasn't one of my favorites, it was still written well and had a unique spin on it that I hadn't read before. I did like the characters and storyline, and can't really pinpoint what exactly was missing for me to make it great. I may just have been not the right audience for this one but I'd still recommend it to fans of the trope to give it a try.

3/5⭐

Alex Dean has just had a perfect day in 1995 with his girlfriend Holly until an encounter with a childhood bully leaves him terribly injured and almost drowning in the Thames River. When he wakes, it is 2010 and he has no recollection of how he got there or what's happened since. So begins Alex's odyssey of living his life out of order. Each day he wakes up in a different year and he has no idea what order the days will be coming in.

Alex must piece together his life bit by bit and try to figure out how it all went wrong. Why did he not end up with Holly? Why did he not take his place at Cambridge? Along the way he meets some new characters and learns how much impact small actions can have on the future.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It does take a little while to really get into it, but if you stick with it you'll start flying through the pages. It reminded me a lot of the book "Oona Out of Order" by Margarita Montimore.

Alex is a tough character because in the beginning of the book he's not particularly likeable. I'd go so far as to say he's a pretty terrible person. But things begin to turn around and you do end up sympathizing with him and rooting him on. He had a lot of growth throughout the book and I really appreciated that. I also really liked the characters of Jazz and Dr. Defrates. I thought they were both interesting and well=drawn.

There is definitely a lot of British slang in this book. I feel like that could have been toned down a bit to appeal to a wider audience. I would definitely recommend this book if you like time travel stories and character growth. Thanks @netgalley for the ARC!

Alex has a promising future and his life gets thrown into chaos after a confrontation with someone from his past. He is 20 but when he wakes up he’s in his 30’s and has no idea how he got there. Then every morning he wakes up and is at different points in his past and future with no context or memories of all the life in between.

When we meet Alex he’s kind of a mess. He’s irresponsible and selfish and not very likable. As the book goes on he learns how much or little choices can affect the future. I truly felt his despair and frustration with how his life had spiraled so far away from where he expected.

The nature of the story made it feel quite fast paced since the story jumped so abruptly from one point in time to another. I had to know what was going to happen next. I couldn’t put it down.

As someone who loves time loops this was decidedly not a time loop but it had the same vibes. It was like the time loop and amnesia tropes had a really interesting baby. This is a character driven story about love, loss, healing, and forgiveness. If you love literary fiction with that touch of magical realism, you’ll love this book.

I found the setting of modern London fun and interesting. The dialogue and narrative had quite a lot of regional dialect and slang in it. I found it added some interesting character but I had to look up certain phrases a few times as it occasionally would lose me.

While I wouldn’t say it was predictable it went along in a lot of ways I hoped and anticipated. A lot of the cause and effect were a mystery to the main character and that vibe kept me turning the pages. However, as an outside observer there wasn’t much that came as a shock. In this case that was not at all a bad thing. There were quite a few reveals that were a pleasant surprise and I found myself in tears towards the end.

This book left me with a wide range of emotions and feelings which is exactly what I look for in a book like this. It’s definitely a new favorite.

I found this book to be exceptional. Alex is relatable and shows what it is to be human. I appreciated how the author was able to show the profound effects of what happens when you face your trauma head on and stop letting it define you. I highly recommend this book. I am now in my 30's but think this book could be such a gift to read as a senior in high school or someone in your early 20's just starting out in life. Thank you to James Goodhand, Harlequin Trade Publishing, and Netgalley for allowing me to read this beautiful ARC.

Time travel is one of my favorite tropes, so I was sadly disappointed when this book did not work out for me. I did not like how it started at all. There was no world building. When you are going to be jumping around every single chapter, you need to prepare the reader for this somehow, or have such compelling writing that they want to stick it out to see if things are revealed. Neither of these were present. The writing fell flat for me on several levels. As stated, there was no world building, and the protagonist, Alex, was one-dimensional and an unappealing character. Not only did I not connect with him, but I plain did not like him. I also found the pacing to be slow, which was counterintuitive as we were jumping through time every few pages.

I think that in concept this book could have been great, but the execution was severely lacking.

Thank you to the publisher Harlequin Trade Publishing, Mira and Netgalley for this e-arc.

Shades of The Time Travelers Wife, wherein the protagonist lives atemporally. After an incident involving brain trauma, Alex Dean lives his life out of order, waking each day, not knowing where and when he is. Sometimes he wakes in his carefree and careless twenties, other times he's forty and weighed down by the choices he's not even aware  he's made. This novel's big questions: Can a change in perspective have profound effects on the trajectory of a person's life? What does it mean to push against the weight of your own history? What exactly do we have agency over? While this book started slowly for me, I downed the latter 3/4 of it in one day. An aside: I found it an interesting complement to the recent "One Day" series on Netflix.

[Thanks to Harlequin Trade Publishing and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]

Reading the prologue and chapter 1, I wasn't sure this was going to be for me. However, as soon as the first year change happened I was hooked. I really enjoyed this book. Seeing Alex discover what his life turns out to be and the emotional reaction he has to it, all the effort put towards changing it little by little. This book really really makes you think about the impact your decisions have on you future, even the smallest thing can have a large impact.

I was initially excited to be asked to read and review this book but I did not like. I thought this copied many of the lessons and plot from The Time Traveler's Wife, which is one of my favorite novels. The Time Traveler's Wife had many characters a reader felt a sense of love, empathy and compassion for, this book not so much.

The writing focused too much on the time travel aspect and not enough on the actual plot of the story. Pus I did not like Alex as a character. I felt sorry for Holly but she was irritating. Sorry, just my opinion.

Disappointed. Cannot recommend. At least the cover is nice. LOL!

Thanks to Netgalley, James Goodhand and Harlequin Trade Publishing Mira for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Available: 3/19/2024

I love time travel books, and I was very excited to learn about The Day Tripper. While it started slowly and the writing style made it hard to keep track of who was talking at times, I got used to it and stopped noticing it once I was fully absorbed in the book.

The more I read, the more I enjoyed it. Alex Dean has his whole life in front of him at age 20: the girl of his dreams and a place at Cambridge. A fight with a childhood enemy at the end of a perfect day destroys it all. Alex wakes up in the future, and every day he wakes up at another date. As Alex tries to figure out what happened to him, he meets a man who has some answers -- but the man isn't giving up all the details right away! We get to watch Alex make mistakes and learn how to push his way out of making the same mistakes again as he realizes his actions in his out-of-order life have rippling effects. Alex grows as a person, and he learns about himself and why he makes the choices he does. The end is mostly satisfying, though there are still some answers left open that left me thinking about this book days after I finished. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys time travel books like I do.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the opportunity to review this book. I left reviews on Goodreads and StoryGraph on Feb 12, 2024.

I didn't love this book. I thought the plot was imaginative, the writing style wasn't for me. It doesn’t mean it isn’t for you.

The Day Tripper follows Alex, a man who finds himself waking up each day in a different point of his life, out of chronological order. On one morning, he wakes up hungover in an unfamiliar room, looking in the mirror to see himself at 36 years old. And so begins his chaotic journey moving nonlinearly through time.

Unfortunately, I had a difficult time connecting with or enjoying the protagonist Alex. He is portrayed as a desperate man with issues - constantly broke, dirty, and struggling with alcoholism. He never seemed particularly appealing or fun to spend time with.

As the story progressed, I did feel it gained some momentum moving towards the conclusion. However, the explanation eventually given for Alex's time-traveling abilities, like in The Time Traveler's Wife, felt offensively dumb and unnecessary. It would have been better left unexplained, allowing it to remain more of a leap of faith or mystery.

Overall, while the concept of moving through one's life out of order shows promise, Alex as the protagonist made it a struggle for me to fully engage with or enjoy this book.

I received and ARC copy of this novel in exchange for honest review from NetGalley.
Contains minor spoilers:
Much high hopes here, but quickly found the premise a but tired, even harking back to “It’s a Wonderful Life” , the romance “In Five Years,” and even the stage show of “Mame:”
Live for today!

I unfortunately found Alex unsympathetic (maybe its my age), and the characters were all kinda one-dimensional. The first 3/4 were very slow going, ending felt rushed, like this was going to be a film script. Did nit buy into the rationale for the time jump fir Alex, but even though it was unsatisfying to me, I really appreciated that there was one!

Ultimately not for me, was hoping for mire. disappointing snd slow going…. With today’s audiences expecting constant action (and i am NOT one of those in my reading adventures), I will be surprised if this novel sells well. Unfortunately cannot recommend this book…thanks fir the reading opportunity.

This book was so unremarkable that I actually forgot that I had already read it. Interesting premise but not an exciting read.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Day Tripper sounded like a story that would be in my wheelhouse of stories that I enjoy. Using some of the same conventions as a Time Traveler's Wife, How to Be Remembered, and even shades of The Midnight Library and dare I say A Christmas Carol, it all boils down to the idea of how you want to live your life and the decisions you make today have lasting impacts for the rest of your life.

This story for me fell a little flat (which seeing others reviews, I'm a smidge in the minority). However, I couldn't quite get on board with this one. I found Alex the main character a little on dimensional and the explanation for why he was experiencing his life out of order on the flimsy side (granted, at least this story had an explanation, looking at you, How to Be Remembered....). I found myself skimming through chunks of it after the first 40% of the story just because there honestly isn't a ton that happens other than what you would expect: man sees future, man gets scared, man changes.

If you're looking for a quick read that has a lot of what you come to expect from these types of stories, then have at it, but if you're looking for more substance than I recommend holding out for something else.

Thank you NetGalley for sharing this title. Wow. Such a hopeful story showing how every decision changes the outcome in your life. I cheered for the hero as time went on. A favorite line close to the end said we create our problems by beating ourselves up. It is and isn't time travel. Maybe more Christmas Carol. Loved it.

The premise for this novel is very unique, and initially I could appreciate what I felt like the MC was trying to accomplish. However, the author took way too long to get to the point. It's just not for me the way I hoped it was.

My initial level of excitement to read this book was high! The premise is interesting, and I have enjoyed other books with a similar idea.
The 2nd half of the book moved along much more quickly than the beginning, and Alex became more likeable as a character.
Overall, I felt there were a lot of difficult life circumstances mentioned, but not explored, and it left the whole book with a bit of a surface-level feeling. Alex spends a lot of time feeling really sorry for himself, and not doing much to improve his situation, and then the potential causes/contributing factors of his situation go unexplored. It's frustrating to see him chase Holly in a borderline-creepy way, trying to force a relationship to work between them. It was tempting to give up on the book because I found Alex so unlikeable.
I think some readers might find the ending really satisfying, and while I found the tone of the second half of the book much more hopeful than the first half, I didn't like the way the story ended. That's down to personal preference, but I didn't find that Alex grew as much as a character as I would have liked to have seen.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Thanks to NetGalley for this advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review.
This time-traveling investigation into the life of one drunk busker in London reminded me of Its a Wonderful Life. Every day that Alex Dean wakes up, he is at a different point in his life, seeing where his choices in his youth affect himself, his friends, his family and his girlfriend in later years. Its not quite 'I wish I was never born" but more like 'whoa, that's not what I want my future to look like - can I change that?'
I took me way longer than it should have to get into the book. I liked the beginning but then I was questioning my own life choices for a good chunk of the middle. I did like last third of the book though so it came back around for me.
From an American standpoint, there are expressions, turns of phrase, and sights that many might not get, and it could be part of the reason the book slowed for me.
The premise is fun and very interesting, but I wasn't moved until quite into it.
3* for liking it but not much more.