Rewind To Us
By Molly Morris\
Reviewed by Lucille Rose
This contemporary romance stars Dixie Mulligan, a cinephile 17-year-old with bad hair-dye and one big secret… fine, two big secrets. Her family, the Mulligans, have the ability to rewind time to whatever moment they choose in the last 365 days. And secondly, she is madly, stupidly, hopelessly in love with her best friend, Sawyer. Every summer, Dixie leaves her stressful, secretive life in New York and becomes California Dixie, the laid-back version of herself she can only be once a year.
California Dixie has been best friends with Sawyer, fellow cinephile and aspiring film maker, for years, but this summer is different. Dixie made a mistake, that may well ruin any hope of turning their friendship into something more. But Dixie’s confident she can win him over. That is until he kisses somone else on her cousin’s doorstep, with no word of warning. That’s when it becomes clear: Dixie must use her rewind to fix the mistake she made or watch the love of her life fall into the arms of another girl. Will she be able to make everything right? Will the rewind save her and Sawyer? Or… does she have to do that all by herself?
Rewind to Us explores the rare but interesting concept of winding back time, with unique adjustments that allow it to be useful, but not over-powered. If the main charcter were able to take back every single mistake they made over the course of the novel, there’d no be tension, and therefore no plot. The annual limitation and family-wide use is interesting and explained well in the opening quotes of each chapter. However, the banal qualifications and instructions one has to undertake to use this amazing power reduces its appeal, making it seem more like an office chore than a unique ability.
The main ‘challenge’ of this book, the roadblock in front of Dixie’s happiness, are her attempts and failures at starting a romantic relationship with her best friend. However, it’s hard to root for eitheir her or her love interest when neither character is particularly likable nor relatable. Yes, unrequited love is an almost universal experience, but as both charcters’ personalities boiled down to simply ‘movies’, the sympathy the reader might have had for their woe was swiftly eliminated. These 2D charcters lacked the depth needed for a good romance, especially Sawyer. Sawyer was essentially a carbon copy of the main charcter, with none of the stand-out qualities needed in a love interest. Their chemistry relied soley on their shared love of cinema and was so weak it got to the point where I was expecting there to be a second love interest, because Sawyer wasn’t making any impression. However, I am a sucker for a happy ending, and therefore I can’t label their relationship entirely loveless. While the characters themselves were uninteresting, the lengths they went to to prove their love were admirable and undeniably romantic.
The unexpected reveal to the end of the book was well executed; not so wild as to be unbelievable but still startling enough as to invoke true surprise. This gave reasoning for the Dixie-Sawyer fallout and wrapped up the complexities of their relationship well.
For readers aged fourteen to seventeen.
