Story for the Week
All my yesterdays made me who I am today…in this moment…right now. And right now will somehow color who I am a year from now…five years from now.
Maybe that feels a little too deep for a Sunday morning. It could be me feeling overly philosophical as we approach the five-year anniversary of losing my mom. The book I just finished probably plays a part by saying: “To long for things to be different is to fundamentally miss the lesson of life.”
I have always said that I don’t regret anything in my life. Everything I’ve experienced, everything I’ve done, has brought me to this point and made me the person I am today.
Is my life perfect? Not by a longshot. Am I happy? Most of the time. Do I have a good life? Absolutely! But if one thing in my past were different, would I be who and where I am today? I don’t know that that’s a reality I want to consider.
Before I met Dennis in 2002, I lived alone in a third-floor, two-bedroom apartment with my three cats. Every room held bookcases full of books by my favorite authors. An entire wall of my living room had a built-in shelving unit where I stored DVDs, cassettes, candles, tchotchkes.
My best friend Stephanie lived on the first floor of the same building. I bowled on a league every Wednesday, had a raucous Super Bowl party every year, played The Sims as much or as little as I wanted. I also religiously went to the gym every day…a habit I should probably consider revisiting. But basically, I answered to no one but myself.
One evening, I was sitting in bed watching television and eating dinner, and my mom called. I don’t remember how we got on the topic of me meeting someone. I do remember telling her that I was content with my single, 35-year-old life. Did I really want a guy to come in and mess up what I had?
I don’t know how long after that I met Dennis in a chat room. I do know that six months after we started chatting, we eloped. He put his house up for sale and moved to Chicago from New York. Six months after that, I lost my job, and we wondered if we had made the right decision giving up the house. We toyed with the idea of packing up and going back to New York. But I eventually got another job. After a year, I returned to the company that laid me off. When that company got acquired, I ended up where I am now.
When he was alive, we talked a lot about the what ifs. What if I hadn’t taken the leap and gone to meet him? What if we had decided to stay in New York or go back to New York? Once we had Corinne, having my parents so close helped because they could take care of her every day. We didn’t have to worry about daycare. And that gave her such a deep relationship with my parents.
And as I sit here in the home that he found for us, surrounded by all the things we accumulated over the last almost 25 years, of course I wonder how our lives would be different if we had made other choices along the way. But I certainly don’t regret the ones we made.
While it would be amazing if Dennis and my mom were still with us, nothing lasts forever (although Corinne has informed me a number of times that I can never die 👀). So if I had the chance to go back and change something? Unless it could promise me more time with them both and nothing would be worse, I wouldn’t want to change a thing.
The most important people in my life surround me. Our home is filled with so much love and laughter. And nothing can take away our amazing memories.
I know Mom and Dennis are with us. I know they’re around because I get reminders of them, like this book. The main character says: “When I met Leo I had been single for a really long time. I was nearly thirty-three, an age where I sometimes thought my best relationships might have been behind me. And a point at which I had become settled in my singlehood. I remember being worried about fitting someone into my life, how I’d have to sacrifice all the freedom I had grown accustomed to.”
That definitely reminded me of my conversation with my mom and of meeting Dennis and of everything that has happened to get us to today. “To long for things to be different is to fundamentally miss the lesson of life.”
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐½
3.5 Stars for Once and Again by Rebecca Serle
256 pages
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication Date: March 10, 2026
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Atria Books.
Publisher’s Description
The women of the Novak family were each born with a gift: they can, just once, turn back time.
Lauren has known since she was fifteen that her mother Marcella saved Lauren’s father from a deadly car accident. Dave is alive and happy, and out on the Malibu waves. But ever since, Marcella, her power spent, has lived in fear of what she won’t be able to reverse. Her own mother, Sylvia, is her polar opposite: a free-spirited iconoclast with a glamorous past she only hints at. Lauren has spent her life between these two role models—and waiting for her own catastrophe to strike.
Then one summer, Lauren’s husband takes a job in New York and she moves back to Broad Beach Road, back into her childhood home on the shores of Malibu. Lauren looks forward to surfing with her dad again and perhaps repairing an unspoken fracture in her relationship with her mother. What she doesn’t expect is for the boy next door to return home as well: Stone, Lauren’s first love, who broke her heart nearly a decade before.
As Lauren falls into familiar patterns, with her family and, more dangerously, Stone, she finds herself thinking about all the choices, large and small, that have brought her to this moment. And wondering, finally, if one of them should be undone.
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Main Characters:
- Lauren – 37 years old, works remotely as a CPA, lives in West Hollywood with her husband Leo of three years, struggling with infertility
- Marcella – 69 years old, Lauren’s mother, retired teacher, extremely nervous about her family always being safe, lives in Malibu in the house she grew up in with her single mother
- Sylvia – almost 92 years old, Marcella’s mother, still lives on the property in Malibu with Marcella and her husband but has her own house on the land, much more care-free than Marcella
- Dave – 71 years old, Lauren’s father, works as a family lawyer, has written 12 mystery books under a pen name, loves to surf and taught Lauren his love for the beach and the ocean
- Leo – 44 years old, married to Lauren, works as a director of photography, just got hired for a job in New York for the summer
- Stone – 38 years old, Lauren’s boyfriend from the time she was 15 until 25, left Malibu for Boulder 10 years ago where he started a surf ranch, back in Malibu for the summer because his stepmother is ill
Trigger warning: infertility, cancer
I was really excited to read Rebecca Serle’s new novel. I loved her 2024 release Expiration Dates (When Your Message from the Universe Smacks You in the Face). Serle’s writing is emotional and heartfelt with a bit of magical realism. In this case, it’s the ability of the Novak women to turn back time—just once—using a silver ticket gifted to them at birth.
From the time Lauren turned 15, she knew her mother Marcella used her silver ticket to save her father after a car accident that actually took his life. That was when Lauren learned about her own silver ticket and what she could do with it. Her grandmother Sylvia has never revealed what she used hers for. Lauren’s is tucked away in a safe, always in the back of her mind wondering if she’ll know the right time.
No, I’m not going to reveal when or what she uses it for because I don’t want to provide any spoilers.
Told from mostly the first-person perspective of Lauren, there are a handful of chapters in the third-person from Marcella’s point of view and a few first-person chapters from Sylvia. The POV switches are a little jarring. I also found Lauren to be pretty selfish for a lot of the story, and I was not a fan of the path she took or how she used her silver ticket. I just knew it was going to bite her in the you-know-what.
That said, this is way more women’s fiction than romance. In fact, I wouldn’t categorize it as a romance at all. The story focuses on family—the relationships between the three generations of Novak women, Lauren’s relationship with her father, and yes, her relationship between her present (Leo) and her past (Stone).
This feels more like a growth story than anything else. Lauren returns to the beach where she grew up and figures out the importance of living in the moment. And the author weaves throughout the story the question of when Lauren will choose to turn back time.
Clearly, we mortal folk don’t have the capability to turn back time, to right a wrong, to reverse a bad decision. But what if…? THAT is primarily what this story is about.
This is a quick, thought-provoking read, and I would definitely recommend it.
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