The Day Tripper

By: James Goodhand

Narrated by: James Meunier

"I loved it!”—Shelby Van Pelt, New York Times bestselling author of Remarkably Bright Creatures

“An essential, profound read.” —The Washington Post

The right guy, the right place, the wrong time.

It’s 1995, and Alex Dean has it all: a spot at Cambridge University next year, the love of an amazing woman named Holly and all the time in the world ahead of him. That is until a brutal encounter with a ghost from his past sees him beaten, battered and almost drowning in the Thames.

He wakes the next day to find he’s in a messy, derelict room he’s never seen before, in grimy clothes he doesn’t recognize, with no idea of how he got there. A glimpse in the mirror tells him he’s older—much older—and has been living a hard life, his features ravaged by time and poor decisions. He snatches a newspaper and finds it’s 2010—fifteen years since the fight.

After finally drifting off to sleep, Alex wakes the following morning to find it’s now 2019, another nine years later. But the next day, it’s 1999. Never knowing which day is coming, he begins to piece together what happens in his life after that fateful night by the river.

But what exactly is going on? Why does his life look nothing like he thought it would? What about Cambridge, and Holly? In this page-turning adventure, Alex must navigate his way through the years to learn that small actions have untold impact. And that might be all he needs to save the people he loves and, equally importantly, himself.

Can you change your life?

Good time travel is hard to write, but Goodhand did it admirably. This is a travel-within-your-own-life type of time travel, where Alex Dean jumps across time into his own body at various different times between 1995 and sometime in the 2020s.

But can he change the things that went wrong? Alcoholism. Skipping out on college (and he'd gotten into Cambridge!). Disappointing the love of his life time and time again. But can Alex change anything to make a difference in how his life turns out?

I'd have given it 5 stars except that the "why" this is happening was not fully fleshed out.