Book Review - Once Upon A Leap Year by Anna Bell

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Title: Once Upon A Leap Year

Author: Anna Bell

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: HQ

Publication Date: 1st February 2024

Rating: 5 Stars

A gorgeous, high-concept romcom about finding love and daring to take a chance. After all, it’s all about timing. . .

29th February 2000. Lucy’s never met another leapling until she encounters Noah also spending his once-in-four-years birthday on a disappointing day trip to Calais. There’s a spark that Lucy is sure Noah must feel too, and their friends insist they have amazing chemistry, but they’re both with other people. It can never be more than platonic and that’s OK.

Over the next twenty years, they’re at each other’s side through all of life’s big moments – weddings, babies, new jobs, family illness – but Lucy can never shake the feeling that they were meant to meet. . .

If Lucy is to find a love that’s rarer than a leap year, she’s going to have to take a leap of faith.

Perfect if you love

❤️Friends to lovers

❤️Right person wrong time

❤️Second chance romance

Why on earth did I leave this a year to read, although I'm very glad I have now read it. 

I felt a fairly close affinity to Lucy and Noah, as I am literally only about 2 hours older than them. They are both leaplings, whereas I was born a few hours before the leap day in the same year, so each birthday they celebrated, I was the same age and have often thought about how cool it would have been had I had the 29th Feb birthday instead and how much more interesting that made me. 

So as I was reading I was remembering some of my own birthdays, while completely enjoying their story. 

And it all starts in 2000, with what Lucy was hoping to be a trip to Paris with Will, and turned out to be a booze cruise trip to Calais to raid the hypermarkets. And its on that trip she meets Paul and Noah who were also on the trip, and Noah and Lucy spend a bit of time having an adventure in Calais while not being too happy with who they came with (for vastly different reasons).

And that is the start of them all being in each others lives.  The book is structured that we get the day before, day after and the special day itself of each leap year, and then we get texts and emails etc between all of the friends to catch us up on what is happening in the in between years. 

It's a wonderful way of managing to get a book to span 20 years, and I really felt as though I knew all the characters.  I also knew what I was hoping would be the end result but I wasn't completely sure I'd get it - but wow that is a truly wonderful ending! 

I was absorbed into the lives of Lucy, Caz, Amy, Noah, Paul and Mags, and of course Lucy's mum (and that was a tough storyline to read) as they go from uni students, to full grown actual adults! 

And I've finished reading this just hours before I turn 41, so probably the most perfectly timed I could have for a book, other than reading it in a leap year, I was just enchanted by the whole book.  

Wonderful writing as I have come to expect from Anna Bell and characters that I have taken into my heart. 

Thank you to HQ and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.