The Good Part Book Review
Is living the life you’ve wished for really a dream come true? Lucy Young is twenty-six and tired. Tired of fetching coffees for senior TV producers, sick of going on disastrous dates, and done with living in a damp flat with roommates who never buy toilet paper. After another disappointing date, Lucy stumbles upon a wishing machine. Pushing a coin into the slot, Lucy closes her eyes and wishes with all her might: Please, let me skip to the good part of my life. When she wakes the next morning to a handsome man, a ring on her finger, a high-powered job, and two storybook-perfect children, Lucy can’t believe this is real—especially when she looks in the mirror, and staring back is her own fortysomething face. Has she really skipped ahead like she’s always wanted, or has she simply forgotten a huge chunk of her life? As Lucy begins to embrace new relationships and the perks of maturity, she’ll have to ask herself: Can she go back to her previous life, and if so, can she stand to leave the good part behind?
Every so often, my Libby account is real dry. No holds being released, nothing on my shelf. I’ll then search for available audio books in my desired genre (often romantic comedies) and just… judge the books by their cover and grab things that look interesting. Do I even read the synopsis? No.
That is how I ended up listening to The Good Part by Sophie Cousens.
and I… freaking… loved it.
Most of the books I’ve read are pretty good. I like them enough. Every so often, I really can’t stand or even DNF a book. and then every so often, I LOVE A BOOK. and I LOVED THIS BOOK.
This book involves time travel, which I absolutely did not expect to be down with. When I read The Seven Year Slip, I was surprised by how much I’d liked that despite the time travel part. I realized that I like time travel as long as I don’t need to understand it, and nobody is trying to explain it. I just want to suspend my belief in reality in a fairy tale way. How does Alice grow too big and shrink too small? IDK, I don’t want to know, but I sure enjoy it. A prince turned into a beast? I don’t need the science, just enough world building to accept it.
and I readily accepted a wishing machine that skipped to the good part. Not only that, but I also appreciated the way in which the main character processed what it meant to have skipped to “the good part.” Is there a good part? Is the grass ever actually greener? How do you process 20 years of life you don’t remember living?
The ending was, perhaps, my favorite part. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but when I realized what night it was, where they were going, and what that meant… I audibly gasped and had a huge smile and an army of butterflies in my stomach. Such a well written, thoughtful and sweet ending to a very realistic tale of time travel.
This book was a lighthearted, easy listen (and I would imagine just as easy to read) and I am now going to be devouring all of Sophie Cousen’s books because she is just delightful. Probably one of my favorite books of my 2024 reading list. and my list has been growing and growing.
10/10!
