I was picked by MNHQ to review this book, which I received for free. This review is in my own words and reflects my true opinion.
I was keen to read this book, with its inventive idea of setting out three different versions of the lives of two people, Jim Taylor and Eva Edelstein. Each story turns on whether Jim and Eva meet, whilst students at Cambridge, one afternoon when Eva is involved in a minor cycling accident. In two of the versions they do meet and in one they don't (until much later).
Each of three versions examines how their lives pan out from that meeting/non-meeting. How such a little event causes such big waves.
I have to confess that it did take me a while to get each version of Jim's and Eva's lives sorted. Perhaps I should have kept brief notes of their relationship status.
I did like the fact that all three versions depicted relationships honestly (no fairytale romances) with all the fraught difficulties that these sometimes brought. Not all the versions had happy outcomes and, in fact, Version One where they married straight after university appeared to be the unhappiest in the long run.
If I had to have a favourite version, it would be Version Two. I liked that Jim and Eva got on with their parallel lives independently of each other, making successes in their respective careers. Eva's and Ted's relationship was a contented and happy one. If I had to have one criticism of the novel it would be that I didn't feel that it was absolutely essential that Jim and Eva end up as a couple in all the versions. I think I would have liked to have seen what would have happened if they had lived entirely separately from each other, never having met - a missed opportunity, or not, given that Eva's relationship with Ted was a good one and not one that was lived with the regret that she and Jim were not a couple. With that in mind, I did feel that the ending to that version, tacking on a brief relationship during Jim's final illness, didn't work for me. I don't buy the star-crossed lovers destined to be together thing. It isn't real.
I found myself really disliking Jim in Version One - cheating on Eva several times, blaming her for his failure to make it as a successful artist, taking refuge in alcoholism, and generally messing up everyone's lives. No surprise that Bella finally walked out on him. And perhaps showing his imperfect character here rather bled across the other versions and coloured my opinion of him.
I thought Eva by far the more interesting character - strong minded, determined to succeed, but not without faults of her own. But ultimately getting on with her life regardless of what it threw at her.