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Author: Linda GreenFormat reviewed: EbookSource: NetgalleyPublisher: Boldwood BooksPublication Date: 13th March 2026Rating: 5 Stars
💫 How would you live your life differently, if you had a second chance?
Emily, Carl and Jules have all ‘gone before their time’. After dying on the same day in Halifax, West Yorkshire, they each wake up in a room in a hotel on the outskirts of town. They’re instructed to meet in the basement headquarters of film production company ‘End Credits’, where no-nonsense producer Suzi tells them their lives have been secretly filmed and they must edit their own biopic before they are able to move on.
There are only three rules: they can’t prevent their own deaths or anyone else’s, they can't kill anyone but they can make a director's cut - one change which will alter everything that comes after.
With the chance to undo their regrets and explore life’s infinite possibilities, what will they choose?
I don't think I've ever felt on the verge of tears so many times in one novel as I did in this one.
I have been totally broken by this, but have ended up completely surprised by one of the endings more so than the others that has left me feeling oddly uplifted.
Especially as we know all three main characters are dead at the start of the book, and we meet them in the afterlife. Now this is the sort of concept that would normally have me running miles away from a book, but given I have read almost every Linda Green novel to date, I trusted that I was reading something in a safe pair of hands.
And I really was, she has a way of writing which really resonates with me and that a few of her books have tended to stick in some way shape of form to me a lot more than most other authors I have read. And this I suspect is going to be one such book.
I have no idea how to describe the contents of what I have just read, other than definitely unique, and completely amazing.
Of all the various theories there are out there about what happens when you die, I really really like Linda Green's ideas in this book, and really hope she is some sort of all knowing person, and that this is the reality. As that would be awesome.
Although it would raise an interesting question of what on earth would my life highlights be, and what sort of director's cut would I make for my own life. Which I think would make for an interesting book club discussion.
I think I've just about felt every emotion there is during this book, I definitely feel as though I've been through the wringer, and I devoured this book in two sittings over the course of the day. I just had to keep reading, and needed to discover more and more about the lives of Emily, Carl and Jules.
And it's not all death and tears, there is laughter too, loads of references that Emily the youngest of the three didn't get, but that I totally got, but equally there is a lot of references to Friends, that I was totally there for.
I'm not sure I'll forgive the author for the amount of times tears pricked my eyes during this book, but it's 10000% the sign of an excellent novel for me to be feeling that deeply that regularly. Utterly brilliant writing, excellent and unique concept and just something totally and utterly different.
Thank you Boldwood Books and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.
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