Living Backwards

Lists with This Book. Feb 15, Katie babs rated it did not like it Shelves: Used to be a Twilight fanfic called Living Backwards by ciaobella Pulled to publish Twilight fan fiction- no no no. Mar 06, Candy rated it really liked it. Who wants to redo their high school years?

But this book takes the main character right back there, via a bump on the head. Welcome to high school, folks. This is one of those genres that's hard to pin down, it's a bit of chick lit with a little bit of time travel and a whole lot of drama. I will admit that when the author sent me this book for review earlier this month, I was drawn to the cover - dude, there's a pink sparkly flask on it! Judg Who wants to redo their high school years? Judge me, go ahead, but I do judge books by their cover at times. Exceptionally well developed characters and a well put together plot round this out to be an outstanding read.

Oh, there's nothing life altering here, it's all just good honest beach type reading, but it was really fun. I especially liked the parts of her dealing with her parents. Highly recommended for chick lit lovers that like a little twist. Dec 23, A. Shepherd rated it really liked it. Living backwards is the story of a 29 year old woman who somehow manages to time travel back to three weeks before her high school graduation.

As most of you know I am not really a fan of romance books, unless there is some other primary element. In this case, the time travel aspect - which just happens to be one of my favorite plot devises - was what drew me to this book. It is pretty much a combination of Peggy Sue Got Married and Back to the Future - both movies are actually even referenced in the book, as is The Butterfly Effect - only this story has been updated for present day to include references to Facebook, and of course has different characters and situations.

The key question of time travel remains - if you can change your past how will it effect your future. What will be the ripple effect? The book is told from several view points, primarily those of Jillian, and her crush Luke. I don't miind stories told from different points of view and sometimes that can be very helpful when you want to really get inside a character's head.

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In this case, for me, it worked and it didn't work. It was good to get to see both sides, but at the same time when we've gone through days worth of Jillian's perspective, then we switch to Luke's and go back several days to repeat everything from his view point, well it just felt a bit unnecessary. And since this is a fairly long book, that made it feel even more so. Perhaps if the author had not backtracked when switching points of view I would have enjoyed that part a bit more. I nearly set this book aside for a couple of reasons.

One is that I had trouble getting into it. It does have some humor and the 90s pop culture references were a bit fun even though I'm a generation older.

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Part of what was turning me off was Jillian's reliance on "Joan", her alcohol-filled flask, to get through normal day-to-day situations. I didn't want to read a book about an alcoholic, no matter how cute it was written. Just not my thing. But I was curious to see where the author was going with that element of the story. I'll admit I was starting to wonder if the author herself were an alcoholic and this story was her way of justifying her own alcohol abuse.

I will say, without giving away any spoilers, that I no longer have that suspicion of the author and I was satisfied with where she went with that aspect of the story. A couple of other tiny things that just slightly annoyed me, and really aren't even worth mentioning, but I'm going to mention them anyway - one is that Jillian, Luke, and the other four primary characters were all "only children" with some pretty hands-off parents.

Stretching the believability a bit. Neither of these issues is really relevant. This is a somewhat cute, chick-lit story about getting a high school do-over, and how it changed Jillian's and Luke's present and future. It is a solid and enjoyable story, full of romance, teen - and adult - angst, and a satisfying ending, but it was just a bit longer than it needed to be. Aug 17, Laurie rated it really liked it Shelves: When 29 year-old Jillian suffers a nasty fall after trying to shimmy into a pair of skinny jeans, she awakens ten years earlier one month before high school graduation.

Always shy and introverted in high school, this time a more confident adult Jillian has a chance for a do-over. With snappy, snarky banter and her trusty sparkly, pink flask that incidentally travelled back in time with her Jillian attempts to change just a few little things. The results vary and sometimes are laugh out loud funny. Depending on liquid courage from Joan, her flask, Jillian meets bad boy Luke behind the gym where they are both sneaking smokes.

Fate seems to have other ideas in mind for both Jillian and Luke. I personally was uncomfortable with the alcoholic consumption by minors — especially in the first half of the book. I tried to bury the feeling of wrongness in the back of my mind because I thought the story overall was so well-told and interesting.

I was not totally successful, but perhaps that has more to do with the generation gap between me and most of the characters in this book. I guess it triggered additional fond memories. Facebook is at the forefront, influencing so much of our social selves. For me, the story bogged down a little bit in the second half. Darker, more intense, with less humor, Jillian is decidedly morose, until her friends step in with some innovative intervention methods. I really wanted this part to move along faster because the gloom felt oppressive.

That said, the author did an exemplary job of realistically portraying how some decisions can have significant emotional impacts upon our life journey. The big reason this novel resonated so well with me, despite the generation gap, is because I fully embraced the idea that sometimes we all need a second chance, and I thought the time travel aspect was perfectly executed. This book was given to me by the author in exchange for my honest review. Jan 04, Szinna rated it it was amazing. View all 5 comments.

Nov 16, Joyous rated it liked it Shelves: This book was a total page turnover. Even though it was a bit stretchy in between and I want to just skip to the end,I couldn't. The only problem I have with it is that it's too long. Aug 31, Christine rated it did not like it Shelves: DNF This is my opinion. I love time travel stories where the heroine goes back in time especially high school.

The heroine, Jillian, was quiet and kept to herself in high school, but once she went to college, she came out of her shell with the help of her friends. Jillian falls trying on pants that do not fit her anymore, hit her head, and goes back in time. She has an opportunity to talk to a guy she crushed on. Sounded like the perfect premise to me.

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However, it did not flow. Honestly, I don't know the adjective to describe what was wrong, but it did not feel right to me. Some of it felt like it dragged. Other times, I had no idea where the story was going. Plus, Jillian was not a very likable character to me. Her drinking became obnoxious. It is not funny when someone gets drunk all the time. It is called an alcoholic.

You Live Backwards So You Are Evil

It is not something your friends should think is funny or cute. She had that flask that she adored and it had a story, but I stopped reading so I did not get the back story on it. I stopped and started reading this book 3 times, but it became painful to get through. Maybe you will have better luck.

Jul 31, Joanna rated it it was amazing. Reading "Living Backwards" was a blast. Sweeney's time travel adventures and the characters she created along with them. She does a fantastic job of capturing the zeitgeist of the "Facebook era"- something we are all still trying to figure out to this very day. Many of us are constantly reminded mainly through Facebook of choices we could have made in the past and how our lives could be today if we had done things differently. The author uses humor, witty reference to pop culture Reading "Living Backwards" was a blast.

The author uses humor, witty reference to pop culture subjects of the 80's and late 90's, and the right ingredients of emotional drama to help us get inside the heads of the main characters. The dialogue is crisp in its familiarity and honesty, and the themes of love, family and friendship that stand the test of time are all interwoven nicely.

Look forward to book 2! Oh and timing is always everything as we see in the book - I bet Ms. Sweeney didn't predict hearing Daft Punk and Pharrell Williams constantly singing "like the legend of the phoenix May 03, Joana Arteaga rated it it was amazing. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to time travel? While Jillian is back in high school she tries to fix her two best friends problems.

During her second time in high school she also gets to know Luke and falls in love but is worried about his future so she decides to leave him without an explanation. Everything seems to be going good for her best friends but her own life is pretty sad because she is still in love with Luke. You will just have to read this book to find out how it all ends. It is pretty long but I did not want to put it down because I couldn't wait to see what was gonna happen next. I loved this book and the pretty pink flask!

Living Backwards

Feb 20, Gina rated it really liked it. If you're a member of a book club, Living Backwards would be a great selection. All of us have had moments in our past where we wish we could go back and do things differently. We get to see what happens when Jillian is given that opportunity. And what's really great about this book is that the author doesn't take the easy way out and make the trip back in time all sunshine and roses.

It's much more complicated than that and the choices Jillian makes are surprising. The pacing of the book is exc If you're a member of a book club, Living Backwards would be a great selection. The pacing of the book is excellent and the writing is sharp, with a great balance of touching narrative and snark.

Jan 31, Aja Conway rated it it was amazing. This book was amazing! I love reading drama filled love stories, but find they can get stagnant and predictable. This book is anything but. It's a great new twist, and keeps you guessing. I can truly relate to Jillian, and find myself thinking, what would I do if I was in this situation?

Absolutely loved this book, and plan to read it again, soon! View all 3 comments. Feb 16, Linsey marked it as rewritten-fanfic. Feb 18, Necole Moreau rated it it was amazing. Loved, loved this book. Mar 06, Lusje rated it it was amazing.



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I simply could not put it down. Only thing that I thought was a bit strange aside from the time traveling but that's what happens in fiction ;- is that Jillian's parents in her high school days were very unavailable. They barely played a role in Jillian's teenage life. Aside from prom night, when they assaulted Luke about his back-seat and one situation in which they found out their always-go Loved this book. Aside from prom night, when they assaulted Luke about his back-seat and one situation in which they found out their always-good-girl did one bad thing and grounded her.

After that they were absent again. I mean, hello, who would ground a teenager and leave her home alone after that, so she could sneak out view spoiler [ The idea of going back in time is really appealing. The struggles Jillian had to decide what should be changed and what not. Nov 05, Emma rated it really liked it Shelves: Aug 01, Zee Monodee rated it liked it Shelves: If you browse reviews for this book on Goodreads, you'll see a lot of readers say they were laughing out loud within a few pages. Turns out they're not wrong - you do end up guffawing like a loon barely a few lines into the book.

Jillian's addiction with Facebook? We've all been there, and yes, all of us have at one point or the other reeked of such social desperation. Right off the bat, Jillian is a 'person' to us, almost a friend, a bestie you're getting to know. I grew up in 3. I grew up in a different type of school system than US high schools no stuff like prom, etc. Yeah, I know - totally sad! Despite not empathizing with the school aspects, I could totally get into what Jillian was going through.

That's the biggest question in this book Then too, this could just be a problem with me. I also got a bit annoyed when something happens in Jillian's chapter, then the next crosses to Luke and we are treated to the same episode meaning backtracking through the timeline. At one point I was like, what's going on???

But don't let this deter you from checking out this book. You can go in there with your eyes wide open about these POV aspects and not end up getting a tad lost like I was at times. The biggest thing I loved about this story and yes, this is totally subjective! I was 28 in , and so all of Jillian's pop culture references, and much of her mindset, resonated with me because I lived my teens in the same years she did, and looking back, we all see how things played out for example, Britney Spears was still an angelic teen back in the day, and Jillian tsk-s that she knows what Brit-Brit will end up into.

While I wouldn't label this book as chick-lit per se, it is a funny, irreverent, sometimes ridiculous in the good way! And yes, the laughs and snorting guffaws that make you look like an escapee from Bedlam don't hurt, either. Take a chance on this story; you won't regret it!

Living Backwards by Tracy Sweeney

Review copy obtained as part of a review tour, in exchange for an honest review May 17, Teena in Toronto rated it liked it. Jillian shares an apartment with her friends, Danielle and Megan Danielle and Megan had been cool kids and Jillian wasn't so Danielle and Megan didn't really know she existed then. That glib and entirely erroneous answer is now denied us.

How do we figure this one out: So this turns out to be an answerable question because the only way we ever could answer it would be in terms of precedence i. It instantly becomes redundancy — it instantly becomes an echo of something else. It is in other words an illusion and what do we need to know about an illusion other than the fact that it is an illusion?



Only information is information, only the new is new, and only the now is real. Our automatic attempt to understand the new in terms of the old or portray the present in terms of the past is therefore the attempt to understand the real in terms of the unreal. And this is how we do things. When this trick is pulled off then the superficially new takes the place of the new, redundancy takes the place of genuine information and where it is the case that something has been neatly substituted for by an inferior analogue then the original has been effectively gotten rid of.

This is the same as saying — as Jean Baudrillard does in Simulacra and Simulations , that the formal symbol has replaced the reality that is being symbolized, and so what we are actually talking about here is the proliferation of the hyperreal, just as Baudrillard describes it. How can the hyperreal not proliferate, when it has such sneaky tricks up its sleeve, when it has such an effective way of cheating?

All it needs to do is to be able to reproduce! So the thing about hyperreality is that it does away with the need for reality. This way we never suspect it. This way we are thrown off the scent, bamboozled. By paying lip-service to all the virtues it has done away with the hyperreal succeeds in making the illusion complete; to anyone who is content to look at things purely on the nominal level of meaning there will be no question whatsoever of missing reality therefore.

The inversion that has taken place means that the token has taken the place of that which is being tokenized. It means that the simulation has taken the place of reality. Or as we could also say, it means that mere flatulent redundancy has taken the place of actual honest-to-goodness information. Saying that we see the present as being caused by the past is the same as saying that we see pseudo-information as the real thing — the past by definition is pseudo-information i.

The fixed rules say what exists or not, what is real or not, in other words, and the rules are the past. The everyday mind inflicts a type of blindness on us therefore — reality blindness! We become blind to reality, blind to the radically new. We live exclusively in a world of seriality, a world of repeats, which we consistently fail to see for what it is. It is of course perfectly possible to live life like this — it is in fact quite unnecessary to make such a statement since living like this is what we do every day!

The new, the real, the now is coming into existence all the time, at every moment of our lives, and yet we continuously fail to encounter it. It is an overflowing cosmic cornucopia of surprise whose overflowing goes completely unnoticed by us! As a result of our peculiar attitude all we care about is stuff that can be repeated, stuff that can be copied, stuff that can be exhaustively explained within the hallowed terms of the everyday mind.

In this attitude lies the root of our morbid fear of death — our fear of death is actually our fear of reality! It is we human beings who are always concerned about death — because we are not living. That is the trouble; we are dying, we are not living. The old people are near the grave, and the young ones are not far behind.

You see, there is a preoccupation with death because we are afraid to lose the known, the things that we have gathered. The unknown cannot be perceived by the known. Only when the old dies can the new come into being, and so life itself is a process of continual letting go. Once we see this then we see a lot! Once we see this then everything all of a sudden become very clear — once we can see that all of our grasping, all of our clutching, all of our holding on and controlling comes down to this exercise, the exercise of promoting the unreal as real, then this puts everything in a radically new light.

We cling so much it seems normal to us — it seems like normal life! Everything comes down therefore to just various forms or types or shades of clinging — our whole life is clinging…. All of our purposeful activity is an embodiment of this struggle, this war.