This Time Tomorrow

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

A fiendishly clever, nostalgic, and tender novel about adolescence and middle age, expectation and anticipation, and how we must cherish what we have while there is still time . . .


If you could go back, would you do things differently?

Alice Stern isn't ready to turn forty. She thought she'd have more time to figure it all out. Above all, she thought she'd have more time with her father, Leonard Stern, an eccentric novelist - but he's lying in a hospital bed and Alice isn't sure if she'll hear his voice again.

When she falls asleep outside their old apartment on the night before her birthday, she's surprised to be greeted the next morning by a much younger Leonard, with a sixteenth birthday card for a teenage Alice who, far from clinging to her youth, is hurtling towards adulthood . . .

Alice soon discovers how she got back here, to 1996 and her sixteenth birthday, and realises she can keep on coming, whenever she chooses. But faced each time with different versions of her life, and the consequences of her decisions, it's on her not to lose sight of what she wants most: some time back with Leonard . . .

With her celebrated humour, insight, and heart, Emma Straub cleverly turns all the traditional time travel tropes on their head and delivers a different kind of love story - about the lifelong, reverberating relationship between a parent and child.

'I just finished This Time Tomorrow and I'm crying at its message and its honestly and its utter beauty. And now I have to go call my mom' Jodi Picoult
'A gorgeous and witty storyteller' Liane Moriarty
'A master of the domestic ensemble drama' Time

© Emma Straub 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

  • Straub has made a mastery of witty, warm novels that spin modern tales with literary flair. Her fourth might be her best. A clever, nostalgic, romantic tale. Part-Russian Doll, part-David Nicholls, it has the makings of a dreamy, witty, contemporary classic

    Evening Standard
  • Poignant

    New York Times
  • Her most emotionally resonant work yet … a complex tale that doesn’t feel the slightest bit complicated

    Vogue
  • An excellent time-travelling novel about adolescence and second chances from the always brilliant Emma Straub

    Metro
  • A tender tale of time travel. Straub strips back the layers to reveal what’s important. It makes you want to stop what you’re doing and call your loved ones immediately

    Stylist, 'Book of the Week'
  • I just finished This Time Tomorrow and I’m crying at its message and its honestly and its utter beauty. And now I have to go call my mom

    Jodi Picoult

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