Blog Tour: 'Wake-Up Call' by Amy Avanzino

Sarah Winslow wakes up with a terrible hangover…and a kid in her boyfriend’s bed. She makes the horrifying discovery that, due to a head injury, it’s not a hangover. She’s got memory loss. Overnight, five years have disappeared, and she’s no longer the hard-living, fast-track, ad executive party girl she thinks she is. Now, she’s the unemployed, pudgy, married, stay-at-home-mom of three kids under five, including twins.
As she slowly pieces together the mystery of how her dreams and aspirations could have disintegrated so completely in five short years, she finds herself utterly failing to manage this life she can’t imagine choosing. When Sarah meets the man of her dreams, she realizes she’s got to make a choice: Does she follow her bliss and “do-over” her life? Or does the Sarah she’s forgotten hold the answers to how she got here…and how she can stay?
Today I’m excited to be part of the blog tour for author Amy Avanzino’s debut novel ‘Wake-Up Call’! I was actually contacted by Amy herself with the question whether I’d be interested to be a part of the blog tour and straight away liked the sound of her novel. ‘Wake-Up Call’ was released on the 1st of September and is part of the Henery Press Chick Lit Collection. I’ve had the pleasure of reading some other Henery Press chick lit titles (such as Phoebe Fox’s ‘The Break-Up Doctor’ series, click here to read my review) and really enjoyed them, so I was looking forward to checking out Amy Avanzino’s novel as well. The book is actually the first part of the ‘Wake-Up Call’ series, so I had my fingers crossed for a promising start!  
28-year-old Sarah Winslow loves her life. She’s working hard on her career, has a nice apartment in the city, spends evenings drinking cocktails with her girlfriends, and shares passionate nights with her handsome boyfriend. Then, one morning, Sarah wakes up with a terrible headache. She immediately thinks it must be the hangover from hell, but when she finds a little kid in the bed she starts to freak out. She quickly discovers she hit her head in a skateboarding accident and is actually suffering from amnesia. She’s no longer 28, but 5 years have passed and she’s now married, a full-time mum to her three little kids (including twins), and living in the suburbs. Sarah can’t believe this is her life at 32; what happened to all of her hopes and dreams? She realises she needs to make the best of things, but does that mean turning her life upside down, longing for the past, or learning to accept the new Sarah and everything that comes with it?
Don't we all sometimes wish we could look into the future and see what our life will look like in a couple of years? That's what happens to leading lady Sarah Winslow in 'Wake-Up Call', except for Sarah it's not just a quick look into the future but a permanent one. She's suffering from amnesia and suddenly loses 5 years of her life, which happen to be the 5 years in which she got married, had 3 kids, moved to the suburbs, and gave up her job. I loved the storyline of this novel and really felt for Sarah, suddenly having to deal with so many changes in her life and not being able to remember anything that happened during the past 5 years. Occasionally, Sarah's behaviour annoyed me a bit and I thought she was quite selfish, but to be honest, who knows how I would react in her situation?
There are not that many characters in the novel, and the ones that are there are easily likeable. Sarah's kids are just the cutest and really made me both smile and laugh out loud quite a few times. It was a relatively quick read (I finished it in two sittings), thanks to the well-paced and easy-to-get-into writing style of the author; I was almost flying through the pages! I personally wouldn't have minded if another element had been added to the storyline, which just focused on Sarah and her amnesia, but it was still a read I enjoyed very much. Great for people who always think the grass is greener on the other side, 'Wake-Up Call' is a light, fun, and thought-provoking read and a promising start to a new chick lit series!

Rating:8,5/10

  For more information about this book: Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com / Goodreads

Thanks to the author for providing me with a review copy in exchange for an honest review.