Publisher's Weekly Review
"If you had to do it all over again, what would you do?" is the question Deveraux poses in this wistful novel of second chances. Twenty-five years into her career, with 26 New York Times bestsellers to her credit and 30 million copies of her books in print, the author serves up the following situation: 19 years ago, Leslie, Madison and Ellie met while waiting in line to get their licenses renewed at the New York City Department of Motor Vehicles. Sharing the same birthday, they became instant friends. Now they're all turning 40, and although they haven't seen each other since that long-ago day, when Ellie invites the others for a reunion in Maine, they agree to attend. Once there, they realize that their lives haven't turned out as planned. But then the trio stumble across Madame Zoya of Futures, Inc., who make them an irresistible offer: they can relive any three weeks from the past, armed with the knowledge since gained. Afterwards, they must decide: should they stick with the lives they have or go with the new futures they've created? The conceit of the DMV meeting and subsequent reunion functions as a clunky device to let the women tell their individual tales of woe; the idea that they're soul mates even though they only met once and never kept in touch requires a considerable stretch of the imagination. When they do go back in time, like 40-years-olds trying to play 20 at a costume party, the conversations are youthfully banal. The eternal allure of lives relived rescues the tale, but this lukewarm effort is strictly for loyal fans. The best thing about time travel in Deveraux's world? Instant weight loss. Major ad/promo. (May 8) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Popular romancer Deveraux (Temptation, 2000, etc.) poses a question: What if you could go back in time and lead a different life? And three very different women who met briefly 20 years earlier reunite and discover the answer. Of course, they only expected to swap family photos and lie to each other about how young they still look. Theres Madison, born out of wedlock, uneducated, formerly a budding supermodel from a tiny Montana town, who gave up her career for the rich boy who once said she wasnt good enough. A horrific accident left Roger partially paralyzed, but Madison selflessly nursed him back to relative health and then married him, until he dumped her again. Theres Ellie, bestselling writer, whose husband, mooching musician Martin, took her for every penny she had in divorce court. (And to add insult to injury, she went on to gain 40 pounds.) There's Leslie, bored to death by her safe suburban existence and Alan, her insurance agent husband who has to have everything his way. Leslies family walks all over her, and shes never done anything important with her life (this is somehow all their fault). This dreary trio gathers at a cute-as-can-be summer cottage in Maine where they catch up, in tiresome detail, on each others lives. On a whim, they visit Madame Zoya, a mysterious fortuneteller who sends them back in time. Madison meets a nice doctor, has a passel of kids, gets a physical therapy degree, and opens a clinic. Ellie latches onto the hunk of her dreams (a lawyer), who devises a way to outfox her nasty ex once and for all; they have a son and live happily ever after. And Leslie tells Alan she wants some changes made. Wonder of wonders, he complies and so do her bratty kids. Tepid soap opera from the usually lively Deveraux. As revenge scenarios go, these lack biteand the unsophisticated prose doesn't help.
Booklist Review
Serendipity brings three career women together at the DMV in New York City on their twenty-first birthdays. Ellie, cute and perky, is a hopeful artist. Leslie is an aspiring dancer, and Madison is in New York to pursue a modeling career. Nineteen years later, Ellie, a successful popular fiction writer who hasn't written for three years, asks the other two to meet at a summerhouse in Maine to find out if their lives went as wrong as hers. Beautiful Madison tells the group about giving up modeling to nurse an ungrateful (now ex) husband, and Leslie talks about leaving the dance world to marry the boy back home, who now may be cheating on her. But neither is as bitter about men as Ellie, whose ex-husband has taken all her money and her self-confidence. The catharsis achieved by their confessions is helpful, but what really changes their lives is the mysterious Madame Zoya, who promises to let them relive any three weeks of their lives and to choose a new path or remain with the old. Deveraux is at the top of her game here as she uses the time-travel motif that was so popular in A Knight in Shining Armor (1996), successfully updating it with a female buddy twist that will make fans smile. --Patty Engelmann