Twice by Mitch Albom ~ A Review

by Susan Roberts

What if you got to do everything in your life —twice?  The heart of Mitch Albom’s newest novel is a stunning love story that dares to explore how our unchecked desires might mean losing what we’ve had all along. 

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October 2025; Harper; 978-0062406682
audio, ebook, print (320 pages); literary fiction

Time travel and magical realism are not my favorite genres, but because I have enjoyed all of Mitch Albom's books, I decided to take a chance on his new book.  I am really glad that I did, and in my opinion, Twice is his best book yet.  It's thought-provoking and beautifully written and it will make you fall in love with the main character even if sometimes you want to yell at him not to do certain things.  It made me laugh, and it definitely made me cry, but at the end, it's a reminder of the importance of learning from our mistakes in life.

"You can't go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the ending."

Alfie finds out at 8 years old that he has a magical power.  He has the ability to go back in time to change something that happened in his life...he can undo any moment and live it again. He can only go back and change things once, and he must accept the consequences of his second try—for better or worse. At first, he uses his new power for things like doing well on a test - if he got a low grade on a test for not studying, he can go back and study, and then when he takes the test again, he aces it.  He also uses it to get rid of embarrassing teenage moments, which makes him more popular with the girls, because once a change is made, no one remembers the first try. Even though he is warned by his mother and grandmother (who also had the gift) not to use his ability to change his love life, because once you make a change in love, you can never go back and correct it to make the person love you again.  Making a change in his life with his true love negatively affects the rest of his life, but he has to learn to live with it.

I liked the way the story is told.  It starts when Alfie is an old man who is in police custody for allegedly cheating at roulette and winning millions of dollars.  He gives the detective a copy of the notebook to read to explain his life.  While they are reading, we learn all about his earlier life and his love for Gianna.  The epilogue to the story provides a perfect ending to Alfie's story.  

After I finished this book, I thought about things I could have changed in my life that would have avoided heartache and pain but when you realize that we are all a product of the lessons that we learned in life - both the good and bad parts of our lives, I realized that having the ability to make changes would have erased all the things that I learned and I wouldn't be the person that I am today.

Give this book a try - it is definitely a winner!

Buy Twice at Amazon

Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina, where she is three hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west.  She reads almost anything but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.   

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