Potential book of the year alert with If I See You Again Tomorrow

So, today I’m talking about If I See You Again Tomorrow by Robbie Couch. I know that Couch has two other books, but this is the first one I’ve picked up. I think this is just one of those books that I was seeing being talked about on Twitter (even though it’s not Twitter) and then I picked it up from a queer bookshop. I’ve got no cute little story, that’s the whole thing.

The blurb says that Clark is trapped in today. Literally. For some reason, he has woken up and relived Monday 309 times. And he has to admit that being stuck in a never-ending time loop is getting pretty lonely. Until day 310 turns out to be… different. Suddenly, Clark’s usual torturous math class is interrupted by an anomaly – a boy he’s never seen before in all his previous todays. When shy, anxious Clark decides to throw caution to the wind and join effusive, effervescent Beau on a series of errands across the Windy City, he never imagines that he could fall this hard or this fast for someone in just one day. But in Beau, Clark feels like he might finally have found the answer to his loneliness. There’s just one problem: How do you build a future with someone if you can never get to tomorrow?

We see that Clark is in therapy and that he tells his therapist that he thinks he’s lonely. We do also find out that his best friend, Sadie, moved to Texas and his living her best life and that his parents are going through a divorce. He then gets given a four-part homework assignment to best his loneliness: Try to make a new friend, help someone who needs it, be vulnerable so other can be too, and do the thing that scares him. He then mentions that this assignment means his therapy is going off-script. And at first, I was a little confused by that, but that’s when he mentions he’s been stuck in the time loop for the best part of a year. So, obviously, if he’s going to therapy most days, there’s going to be a script, as the same session is happening over and over again. With the time loops, there are other bits he’s used to, like the conversations he has with his mum and sister when he gets home to his apartment. Apparently, he’s also bitter towards his mum since she’s the one that wanted the divorce, and the only thing he majorly enjoys is getting to bake for his little sister in the evening, since it’s meant to be her birthday the next day. You see that he enjoys baking different things almost every night. Then finally, in the third chapter, Beau Dupont shows up in his class, which is The Boulet Brothers Gagula, because he’s never shown up before, and that’s when they run off together, steal a car and run those errands.

I think this is the first book in a good few months that I’ve been truly excited by. I know the time loop concept isn’t anything new, but I don’t think it’s anything that I’ve read before myself. And I don’t know, I just think it’s exciting. Since Clark is living the same day over and over, this one thing showing up and changing is going to be the gagula for him. There’s this bit where he mentions that he’s used to the same walk home and seeing the same events, even the points in the early days of being in his time loop where he went off and did different things, he mentions that the novelty of that wears off. But I don’t know, I started reading this on the train, and by the end of my journey I’d read almost 100 pages.

I appreciated the whole journey that Clark went on, and it all started with him going to therapy. Weirdly, in a way, that therapy session that he started the story with, that’s what inspired him to grow. And I suppose, the situation that he was in, reliving the exact same thing over and over again, there’s the whole thing of why not do these things that scare you? Why not? Sometimes you’ll read a book and the reason why someone is doing something will be missing, and Clark’s was so obvious. Since he’s lived the same day hundreds of time, he might as well have done things that scared him or made him veer away from what he normally did.

Side characters in a book like this are interesting, because how deep can you get with them, really? It’s not like they can go on any kind of character arc or anything, since they’re stuck in the same period of time, not remembering anything going on, whereas with Clark, he’s living every single form of the day over and over. Like you get to see Clark visiting the people Beau takes him to meet on their first day together and you get bits and pieces of them, which I really liked. There’s this guy, Emery, who works at a movie theatre, you find out that he wants to be an actor but isn’t very good. And then even with Clark, he sort of flits around the place, because he knows some of these people, but obviously, they only know him for a very brief period of time before essentially getting reset. So, there were moments where he would be talking to these people around the city, learning their stories, and then they forget everything. It's difficult for them, because how deep can you go with them?

Since both Clark and Beau are stuck in the same time loop, Beau is convinced that they need to find their soulmate to get out of it, although since Beau likes Clark, he wants to avoid him since he thinks that he’ll end up forgetting the boy he’s sort of with already. This whole soulmate thing, I immediately thought that this was the plot to my favourite TV show ever, Vice Versa, but in a different font. In Vice Versa, this guy dies and wakes up in another universe, and the only way he can get back is by finding his portkey, which is someone else who died and skipped universes, who will help him get back. Basically, this was the same plot, and I love that plot line. I assumed that Clark and Beau would be each other’s soulmates, like they’d spend their time assuming they’re not, only to find out they are, something like that.

I’m going to be 100% real. I loved this book. I mentioned before that I read the first 100 pages of this book on a train journey, I then read the entirety of the rest of the book two days later when I was off work. Again, I loved this book. It’s the first time in a decent chunk of time that I’ve been this engrossed in a book and I was fully emotional by the end of it. I’d 100% tell you to go read it.

Okay, bye!