101. The Other Side of Now

101. The Other Side of Now. Paige Harbison. 2025. 320 pages. [Source: Library] [adult romance, 3 stars]

First sentence: I pull the trigger over and over and over as the increasingly feeble stream of water fails to propel my tiny horse as fast as I want it to go.

Premise/plot: Meg Bryan, our heroine, is given a unique opportunity to see what her life could have been like if she'd made another choice as a teenager. The choice to go or stay. To go to a small Irish village and attend college/university (Avalon) OR to stay in Florida. Whatever she chooses, she wants her best friend Aimee to choose as well. She chose to stay and ends up moving to LA where she's a soap star, or prime soap star, perhaps. Aimee, well, less said the better. Crazy unhappy, she books an impulsive trip to Ireland, to Avalon. That trip shows her the other side--what might have been. And EVERYTHING is different. But is different better?

My thoughts: The premise kept me reading. Honestly though, I found both versions of Meg [aka Lana Lord, her stage name] to be insufferable--though in different ways. Because the truth of the matter is we almost get three main characters. Lana Lord who is a soap star. Other-Meg who lives in Ireland and we just hear about her from everyone else. Lana-living-Meg's-life is who we spend the most time with. She is essentially "taking over" Other Meg's life, impersonating her, befriending her friends, falling in love with Other Meg's boyfriend. She is learning life lessons because she sees the mistakes of both Other Meg and Lana Lord.

I wanted to like this one. I liked it well enough--barely. I didn't really "like" the main character.

How adult was it? It had one fairly graphic sex scene. It could have been a LOT worse, I know for being adult romance. (Surely one of my least read genres for a reason. Except for clean romances.)



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