REVIEW: Begin Again by Helly Acton

Genre: Contemporary Fiction | Speculative Fiction | Romance

Release Date: 6th July 2023

Publisher: Bonnier Books

Despite living firmly in her comfort zone, Frankie McKenzie feels unsettled. She can't help feeling something's missing. Is it a home to call her own? Travel? A more rewarding job? A relationship? Before she can work it out, she dies in a freak kebab-related accident after yet another dud of a first date.

But life isn't over for Frankie. Instead, she is offered a second chance: Frankie can revisit key moments from her past to see if different choices will lead her away from that fateful takeaway and on to the fulfilling life she's always dreamt of.

"Life shouldn't be about filling time, it should be about fulfilling time."

In my own experience, Helly Acton is the Queen of unique speculative, high-concept fiction. So when I was sent her new book with the pitch of “the good place meets sliding doors” you just know I couldn’t wait and Helly did not disappoint.

Begin Again had that same patented immersive storytelling that we’ve come to love, but with a quieter, more nuanced style that felt almost dreamlike and I adored it. It’s a deeply moving, evocative story that reaches in and pulls out that part of you that wants to connect, tenderly exploring the subtle and universal experiences of regret, grief and confusion in a spectacularly uplifting and remarkably relatable story.

We first meet Frankie as she’s about to die in a puddle of kebab sauce that will ruin her favourite white chiffon top, her last day being spent on one of the most embarrassing dates in history. But even though she’s dead when we meet her, she is brimming with life. She was perfectly imperfect — someone watching and comparing her life and trying not be be cynical wondering when she was ever going to get her life together … but then she died. Her narration was friendly and talkative, and full of ridiculously witty humour and terrible puns that had me both rolling my eyes and laughing at the same time.

As we rewind the clock, it’s amazing to see the tiny little moments that change the path of Frankies life that she didn’t even realise at the time — it moves fluidly like a dream between times, with a blindingly compelling and refreshing take on afterlife bureaucracy pushing the story forward in its own time. Each moment is delicate and poetic, asking if it’s love, friends, success, power — or something else entirely that gives us a fulfilled life?

A charming, compelling story of second chances — life affirming and utterly hilarious, this book just felt like one comforting hug and I absolutely loved it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I was gifted an advanced reviewers copy of this title in return for an honest review.

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