Today is my stop on the blog tour for the audiobook Back to Reality by Mark Stay and Mark Oliver. I'm going to be sharing my review of the book with you and if you like the sound of that, you can click here to order your copy now. Don't forget to check out the other stops on the tour.
Here's what it's all about...
The bestselling 90s nostalgia time travel comedy
Jo's world is about to change forever, and it’s about time
Her marriage is on auto-pilot, daughter hates her, job sucks and it’s not even
Tuesday.
As Jo's life implodes, a freak event hurls her back to ‘90s Los Angeles where,
in a parallel universe, she’s about to hit the big time as a rock star.
Jo has to choose between her dreams and her family in an adventure that
propels her from London to Hollywood then Glastonbury, the world’s greatest
music festival.
Jo encounters a disgraced guru, a movie star with a fetish for double-decker
buses, and the biggest pop star in the world... who just happens to want to kill
her.
Back to Reality is a funny, heartwarming story about second chances, with a
heroine to rival Bridget Jones and the rock n roll nostalgia of Keith A Pearson.
The novel from the Bestseller Experiment podcast presenters Mark Stay and
Mark Desvaux. The Two Marks went to more gigs in the '90s than in any
other decade and are currently working on a time machine to see Prince in
concert.
Review: Well this was a wild ride of a read. I have read a few books in my time where we go back to alternate versions of the main character but I really like the way this book almost introduced 3 version of Jo for us to meet and enjoy. The time travel aspect of it meant that you really had to concentrate on the audiobook and might have worked better in a physical book so you could flick back and forth but I listened to the majority of this one whilst out on walks so I could really focus on that and nothing else.
Jo is an interesting character because we first meet her back in 1990 then we come to meet Jo when she is much older and a mum to a teenager. We are led to sympathise with her in her 'modern' life because her daughter is really testing her patience and her husband is just a bit shit... no spoilers here. I like the fact that the writers get us on side first and then take us on the journey with Jo. There are definitely points in the book where I don't feel like Jo made the best choices but that only made me like her more and want to read on to find out what the fallout from those choices would be.
I like the fact that we do jump around a bit between the different versions of Jo and we get to live a little as a celeb as well as finding out about Jo as a person through her past and future actions. I think it was a clever way to structure the story and must have taken a great deal of planning. As I previously mentioned I think some slightly better delineation between what time we were in and what time we are now might have been useful for the audiobook just because you can't see it clearly in front of you on the page but if you're giving the book your full attention you get brought up to speed pretty quickly.
I enjoyed meeting Jo and fully bought into the storyline and the lay lines of Glastonbury and this book definitely brought me a good amount of escapism at a difficult time.
About the Authors
Mark Stay co-wrote the screenplay for Robot Overlords which became a movie with Sir Ben Kingsley and Gillian Anderson, and premiered at the 58th London Film Festival. Author of the fantasy novel The End of Magic, he is also co-presenter of the Bestseller Experiment podcast and worked in bookselling and publishing for over twenty-five years. He lives in Kent, England, with his family and a trio of retired chickens. He blogs and humblebrags over at markstaywrites.com
Mark Desvaux writes fiction as Mark Oliver. He also authors inspirational non-fiction and online courses, and is a professional speaker in the fields of self-development and spiritual growth. He is chairman and co-founder of the charity Foodshare. As a bestselling recording artist (Urban Myth Club), Mark's two critically-acclaimed albums have led to appearances at festivals such as Glastonbury (which he tries to mention on every podcast). He lives on Vancouver Island with his family, surrounded by the beautiful mountains and seas, with chickens, bees and very tall trees.
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