Before You Go

Author/Guide: Clare Swatman

Why a Booktrail?

2000: When Zoe’s husband Ed dies, her world caves in. But what if Zoe can get Ed back?

ISBN: 978-1509824809
Genre: Fantasy/Sci Fi, Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

You find your soulmate . . .

Some people stare love in the face for years before they find it. Zoe and Ed fumbled their way into adulthood, both on different paths – but always in the same direction. Years later, having navigated dead-end jobs and chaotic house shares, romance finally blossoms. Their future together looks set . . .

Then the unthinkable happens.

One morning, on his way to work, Ed is knocked off his bike and dies. Now Zoe must find a way to survive. But she’s not ready to let go of the memories. How can she forget all of the happy times, their first kiss, everything they’d built together? Zoe decides she has to tell Ed all the things she never said.

Now it’s too late. Or is it?

Locations

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Travel Guide

This is a journey that many of us won’t take and no one ever wants to take. But it’s a delicate and heartbreaking story to read. But here Zoe loses a loved one and traces their steps to the key moments in their relationship. The park where they used to walk, the area of Camden and Brixton where they worked. Such innocent places take on a sad and poignant tone when you return without your loved one. A street which was once so full of trees and crunch leaves can now seem cold and barren, a park where you walked, was once full of children’s laughter and a place to think now becomes your lonely silent world.

The chance to go back and meet that person again in those very places however, to go back in time and experience again what you felt like what it was to meet them, retrace your steps…well that can be very special indeed. This is the story of getting that chance and if you’ve lost a loved one, it will make you cry.

Booktrailer Review

This is a sad and poignant read. Imagine what you would do if you could go back in time to when your loved one was still alive? And then getting to go back in time to before they died. What would you say and do? How could you live knowing the future but living the past?

This book really reminded me of a mixture of The Time Travellers Wife and The Lake House – it’s improbable but gets you thinking about what you would do in Zoe’s place. She associates certain places in London with happier times so locations become part of her memories and going back to them enables her to see them in a new light.

Zoe makes some good and bad decisions in an attempt to make sense of it all and to change the future for the best. Not sure I agreed with everything she thought and did – but it ‘s a twist on the time travel genre and gets you to question your own life and think about your own loved ones.