Book Blurb:
The Rewind by Allison Winn Scotch: When college sweethearts Frankie and Ezra broke up before graduation, they vowed to never speak to each other again. Ten years later, on the eve of the new millennium, they find themselves back on their snowy, picturesque New England campus together for the first time for the wedding of mutual friends. Frankie’s on the rise as a music manager for the hottest bands of the late ’90s, and Ezra’s ready to propose to his girlfriend after the wedding. Everything is going to plan–they just have to avoid the chasm of emotions brought up when they inevitably come face to face. But when they wake up in bed next to each other the following morning with Ezra’s grandmother’s diamond on Frankie’s finger, they have zero memory of how they got there–or about any of the events that transpired the night before. Now Frankie and Ezra have to put aside old grievances in order to figure out what happened, what didn’t happen…and to ask themselves the most troubling question of all: what if they both got it wrong the first time around?
My Review: 4 stars
The Rewind by Allison Winn Scotch was a fun ride through the early nineties and then a decade later on the eve of Y2K. That evening happens to be when Frankie and Ezra, our main protagonists, separately attend a wedding, after a brutal breakup upon graduation. There were so many amazing flashbacks to music, dress, and college life that it took me back to my own college years, although those were in the eighties.
The story focuses on a mysterious night, one in which neither can remember how or why they woke up in Ezra’s dorm room bed, followed by the shocker of shocks – they both were adorning wedding rings. At first, I thought this was going to be some sort of Freaky Friday or magical realism sort of book, but soon realized no magic was needed – this was just a romp through circumstance and memory while the exes tried to recall what happened.
As they trek the snowy landscape of their college campus, the familiar buildings and bars bring back long-lost memories as well as laugh out loud moments while they try to unravel the night before. Scotch has a good sense of creating witty and realistic humor. As they spend time together and apart, they both begin to realize what roles they played in their breakup and why it happened in the first place.
This book says a lot about introspection, finding what you really want to do with your life, learning what makes you happy, music, gambling, friendship, and motherhood. Already nodded for a Netflix film, I think this may be the author’s best book to date.
Quotes I liked:
The questions are bullshit, the matchmaking is bullshit. It’s all just an algorithm. We just want people to sign up and maybe some of them will have a few decent dates and get laid. Who am I to say who will be a perfect match, who will live happily ever after? It’s all just fiction.”
“This was what she owed April a decade later: an act of grace. And this was why she showed up for her wedding; because sometimes, you stood beside people to make things easier, to make them complete.”
“Perhaps when you told yourself a story long enough, often enough, you tricked your mind into believing that it was true.”
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