Do you ever wonder about what your life might have looked like if you made one different decision? Or wonder if you were not afraid to take risk that might have changed everything? Perhaps, a first love didn’t work out the way you’d hoped and you wonder what might have been…

It’s easy to fall down that rabbit hole but sometimes it’s more satisfying to read somebody else’s should have could have story. As I was reading this book, I thought about people and times in my own life who I hadn’t thought about in years. It’s good when a book gives you a look back into your own memories. As long as you don’t spin out!

I don’t know that I would call it a beach read but I’d call The Other Side of Now a great escape during the incredible heat we’re experiencing now. It’s not fluff by any means, The novel is surprisingly multilayered. It explores grief, guilt, loss, and a search for a place in the world. It brims with humor, music, an array of colorful, fully developed characters. Magical realism is also thrown in. At the beginning, I thought oh, here we go again. This follows the same path as Rebecca Searle’s, Italian Summer. As it turned out, it was and it wasn’t. The trajectory pushed this kind of story up a rung.

As the book opens, protagonist Meg is an actress in a successful TV series and is living with a good looking Hollywood heartthrob. She has all the trimmings of success. It is her lavish thirtieth birthday party. Although she supposedly has everything, she is unhappy and the party triggers somewhat of a breakdown. Meg decides she needs to get away from everything and everybody. She travels to the small Irish village that she and her best friend, Aimee, planned to.move to out of high school. That particular dream ended tragically when Aimee died in a car accident years earlier.

I was immersed as soon as Meg, arrived in the Irish village and left behind her Hollywood highly styled persona and morphed back into her not so trim, natural self. I was not sure at first what was happening in her fictional world— the one that had at one time been her future— but it was exactly where I wanted her to be. The Hollywood portion was just enough to set the stage but the majority of the book took place in Avalon where not only does everyone know your name but they know everything about you. Including Meg. Absolutely the right place for someone who is adrift.

All the characters were delightful to read and well flushed out —Kiera, Cillian, the parents, Aimee, and of course, Meg. The ending was just right. Not too much or too little. Kudos to author, Paige Harbison, who knew when to lay it on and when to pull back, I would recommend this book to anyone who needs be uplifted.

Harbison is multitalented and is a visual artist in addition to being a writer. Her previous three novels are young adult for Harlequin Romance, a new imprint. They are: Here Lies Bridget (optioned for film), New Girl, and Anything to Have You.

Many thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read the advanced reading copy for review.

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