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Fiction. Literature. Romance. Christian Fiction. HTML:From #1 New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury comes a classic story about second chances, featuring the beloved Baxter family and a young father who finds his whole world turned upside down on the eve of his divorce. What if you could see into the future and know what will happen tomorrow, if you really walk out that door today. Pay attention. Life is not a dress rehearsal. From their first meeting, to their stunning engagement and lavish wedding, to their happily-ever-after, Noah and Emily Carter were meant to be together. Theirs is a special kind of love and they want the world to know. More than a million adoring fans have followed their lives on Instagram since the day Noah publicly proposed to Emily. But behind the carefully staged photos and encouraging posts, their life is anything but a fairytale, and Noah's obsession with social media has ruined everything. Distraught, Emily reaches out to her friend Kari Baxter Taylor and tells her the truth: Noah and Emily have decided to call it quits. He is leaving in the morning. But when Noah wakes the next day, everything is different. Emily is gone and the kids are years older. Like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, bizarre and strange events continue throughout the night so that Noah is certain he's twenty years older, and he is desperate for a second chance. Now it would take a miracle to return to yesterday. When We Were Young is a rare and beautiful love story that takes place in a single day. It's about the gift of knowing what tomorrow will bring if you really walk out that door today.… (more)
User reviews
When the book opens, Noah and Emily are contemplating divorce. Emily feels Noah is too wrapped up in their social media accounts--to the extent that it takes away time with his family. Noah decides to move out.
We end up getting the story of their past through Emily reminiscing and Noah dreaming. Emily comes to realize that she can't blame everything on Noah. She didn't initiate conversation early on to ask him to allow her to grieve etc.
We also see a glimpse of the future through Noah--I'm not sure what Noah was having--and I'm not sure he or the author were either if the end is any indication. Noah seemed to be moving into the future. He would go to sleep and dream of his and Emily's past, then wake up in the apartment he's planning to move to and each time his children would be years older and he couldn't remember anything in between. But he gets to see how lack of a father impacted both his children.
I'm not fully convinced that the future Noah envisioned was what would have happened. I can't see Noah totally cutting out of his children's lives just because he didn't live in the same house with them--though that's what the sequence indicated happened. In his characterization, Noah seemed more reliable than the visions made him out to be.
But the visions did make Noah realize what he was losing, what he was giving up .
I listened to this on CD and the only part that bothered me was near the end when the reader for Noah had him shouting and crying out. It just didn't ring true in their performance of that part and was more annoying than dramatic.
Not my cup of tea. Also, hints of A Christmas Carol where God does it all in one night.
#WhenWeWereYoung #KarenKingsbury
This was a very good book! I read it in 3 days and thoroughly enjoyed it. I will have to look into more books my Ms. Kingsbury.