After reading praise from both Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Susan Wiggs about Michael Baron’s books, I definitely was curious. Usually I stay far away from most male authors who try their hand at writing romance books, because invariably their idea of a happy ending and mine differ. But after scrutinizing the summary carefully for signs of a bittersweet ending, I decided to go for it.

Ken Timian and Melissa Argent are deliriously happy. When the story opens they are eleven days and twenty four minutes away from being man and wife. Ken can’t wait until it is official. Even after dating and then living together, he finds Melissa utterly fascinating. But after a visit with her parents – the evening entertainment is almost always spent looking through albums of family photographs – he wonders again what she was like before he met her. He compares her to a mesmerizing novel with the first thirty chapters missing. What he wouldn’t give to know more about that part of her life.

Ken is the type of man who is not afraid to show his love, and he showers Melissa with tokens of his affection. His go-to store for gifts is Stephon’s, a dingy store with an enchanting (and enchanted) interior that specializes in unique jewelry. Anytime Ken wants to buy Melissa something special he goes to Stephon’s, because magically for such a small place, the inventory changes constantly. Now, before their wedding, Ken wants one last exceptional gift to show Melissa how he values their courtship. When Ken returns to Stephon’s, he verbalizes his fantasy of knowing Melissa as a child and Stephon informs him that he can make that happen. Extremely skeptical but motivated by desire, he agrees.

And it happens. He sees Melissa as a toddler, a young girl and then adolescent. But something heartbreaking and horrific happens to her. Upon his return he is distraught and begs Stephon to send him back, and let him change history. Reluctant at first, finally Stephon agrees. Ken is able to stop the incident from occurring, but upon his return, will life still be the same?

My initial impression in the beginning was not very favorable. The first couple of chapters are almost sappy and cloyingly sentimental. Realizing that few novels start out with the couple so vehemently in love helped ease my transition into the heart of the story, but it felt creepy that an individual would want to pry so deeply into a loved one’s history. After getting over those concerns, I found myself enjoying a story from the male’s point of view.

When I am reading I rarely think of a book as a screenplay, but towards the middle of this book, the thought that this could be a Lifetime movie popped into my head. Not that this is a bad thing. Maybe it is because the book seems so linear. However, the simplicity of goal and solution is appealing.

I did enjoy the story and the premise stayed with me long after I closed the book. The author definitely gave me food for thought. Can changing one incident really allow a person to go on to a completely different life?

I wavered back and forth between a B- and C+ grades. I finally decided on C+ because while I liked the novel, I didn’t feel the love enough to want to seek out other books by the author. Still, it was a nice change of pace. While the paperback copy is somewhat expensive, at the time of writing the Kindle copy is extremely reasonably priced. Sometimes it nice to have a novel that makes you question your belief system.