Rewrite the Stars

The story starts in Dublin, December 2010, when Charlotte was 22 years and 9 months old (very specific!) when she first met and fell in love with Tom Farley, a friend and member of a fledgling band her brother was assembling. The minute they met they clicked, much to the annoyance of her brother, but nothing ever came of it because her brother wouldn't let them get near one another. Fast forward to Dublin, December 2015, when now teacher Charlotte is out celebrating the end of the school term with her sister and a friend, when she unexpectedly bumps into Tom and ends up going back home with him. The spark is definitely still there and they spend a lovely day together. But Tom and her brother, Matthew, haven't spoken for years after the band split up, but Charlotte still doesn't know what happened. But since it happened her brother has slipped into depression, lives back home with their parents, and everyone treats him with kid gloves now. But Charlotte decides that her and Tom deserve a chance of giving their relationship a go and so confronts her brother about it, with dire consequences... and her and Tom don't make it - again. After this both Charlotte and Tom move on with their separate lives, ending up in music success for Tom and marriage for Charlotte to Jack. But then an event happens that throws them back together in 2018 and all the 'what ifs' come to the surface for Charlotte. I felt so sorry for Jack, Charlotte's husband, as she had kept all her old guilt and feelings about Tom from him and he was such a really lovely guy and felt so betrayed. I must admit the way Charlotte completely blocked Tom from her life because of her brother's reaction really annoyed me at the time, but I suppose it was the whole premise of the book, would they/wouldn't they eventually get together, and I must admit after I got over that little hiccup the book just got better and better. A definite fork in the road story, take one road and your life turns out one way, take the other road and there's a completely different life ahead. But which one is the better, and would the path not taken (and always regretted in Charlotte's case) have been the right one? There was a lovely quote near the end - 'imagine if all the time you spent wondering "what if" had been spent on looking at what you already have, instead of what you haven't got', which I think we could all do with sometimes. A really lovely book set in Ireland, with some great characters (Jack was my favourite) and a great ending, what's not to like? A great read and highly recommended, I couldn't put it down in the second half!