Maybe Next Time

“I was nervous of that letter too. Dan’s could be funny, loving, but they were always honest. And this year I was scared of honest.”

Throughout the novel, the letters share information and backstory about Emma and Dan’s relationship but also elaborate on Dan’s character. Early in the book, Emma’s nervousness about the contents of his letter suggests that she already knows she hasn’t lived up to last year’s promise to reform, creating tension and suspense.

“Another Monday, another ordinary day. How many of these faces had I unwittingly stared at on other Mondays? I pulled out my phone once more.”

In this first iteration of the fateful Monday, Emma is caught up in the world of her phone and the tasks on her to-do lists. She feels disconnected from the people around her. This shows her state of mind at the beginning of her character arc. The irony her of considering the day just another Monday becomes apparent later.

“No wonder he’d been quiet. The cinnamon swirl, the dejected expression when I’d bustled out. But it was OK, I could still fix things, I could still stop a repeat of last year.”

Emma’s realization that she forgot their anniversary—again—is one of the first epiphanies that make her want to change. Her getting caught up in work and distancing from Dan in some ways parallels his absence when Poppy was young. Her resolve to fix things is ironic given that Dan dies that evening, but the course of the book does give her time to fix things, including her behavior and her relationships.

“For a flash I really did just want to stay there, leaning into him, his familiar smell, his solid body beneath his shirt. We would sit at the table, catch up, the air smelling of warm batter. I’d magically produce my letter to him with a coy smile and a light laugh.”

This moment in the first iteration of her Monday reveals not only Emma’s deeper desire to connect but also her main character conflict: She allows her other commitments to come between them. This is part of her emerging epiphany about what’s important to her and foreshadows the choices she makes when she realizes that she’ll have the opportunity to live this day again and again.

“Sometimes I lie here and even when you’re next to me I feel alone. And I want to moan to my best friend about it—but that’s you.”

Dan’s letter of that year—at least the first one he writes—confirms the character obstacles that are already evident from the action. The passage hits an emotional low point because in the narrative, a car has just struck and killed Dan, and Emma regrets that her last words to him were angry ones. This first day sets the baseline for all the things Emma tries to change as she reconfigures her life. In addition, the letter carries Dan’s voice past his death, which in a way foreshadows his reappearance when Emma wakes up and relives the day.

“I swallowed down the insistent voice that told me it hadn’t been a dream. I needed it to be a dream. I couldn’t live without Dan.”

The novel handles its fantastical premise matter-of-factly. The first time Emma wakes up on the same day, she explains it all away as a dream; her wish to have Dan back supersedes her need for a realistic explanation, which keeps the narrative flowing and allows readers to suspend disbelief.

“My insides felt like they were unraveling, my head too full of questions.”

This statement captures how the novel uses figurative language lightly but to strong effect. Emma’s thoughts represent how she’s trying to make sense of her repeating day.

“It’s no exaggeration to say that I think you’ve saved my life this year.”

Dan’s anniversary letter after he and Emma reconcile when Poppy is young expresses his gratitude for their life together. The reference to his fall seems innocuous, but the novel later reveals that this incident is linked to his death.

“I felt a flicker of sadness that we’d let that slide, or rather I had. I was the one with the all-important Arthur meeting, the urgent edit, or reading I hadn’t finished over the weekend.”

Given the chance to live the day again, Emma begins to notice things she wants to change about her life. This is important step in her character arc, helping her determine her priorities and reorient her behavior around them.

“As I looked round at their surprised faces I remembered where I could be. At home, with my family, or seeing a friend. Why was I so worried about offending people I barely knew?”

This passage dovetails with the previous one, following Emma’s evolving epiphany that she has been spending time on things that are less important and ignoring the things that really matter to her, like her family and friends. This realization is the beginning of the shift in her thinking that illustrates her character growth over the course of the story.

“Something about the line made me wince, the casual assumption that we’d both be around, breathing, together, when we were retired. We’d said similar things a hundred times but this time it caused a frisson of panic.”

In reliving her day, part of Emma’s new sensitivity is the awareness that she could lose Dan, which adds to the tension and conflict. The suspense of whether she can change the events of the day and prevent Dan’s death drives the first half of the novel.

“A woman was crying in a police car as I staggered home and I felt a searing hatred for her.”

One subtle mystery of the story is why Emma feels the situation is familiar when she sees Dan getting hit by the car; only later does the novel reveal that the driver is Hattie. Emma’s resentment, articulated here, provides an ongoing obstacle to her ability to resolve and deal with what’s happening. The carefully orchestrated plot places the revelation so that it surprises readers but makes sense.

“The accident he’d had, his drunken fall from a second-floor balcony that had put him in the hospital, seemed to jolt him back into being.”

This passage again exemplifies how the novel carefully plants information that takes on a fuller dimension later. Emma realizes that Dan’s fall and recovery was a turning point in their relationship; it emerges later as the plot device that explains her time loop.

“I felt like I was losing my handle on things, like everything I’d known was shifting beneath me. I couldn’t be sure of what was real or what was not.”

This passage conveys Emma’s emotional turmoil in reorienting her priorities and increasingly realizing the depth of her love and need for her husband. Her struggle adds to the novel’s conflict, making her eventual transformation more rewarding.

“I had been going through something huge and crazy but I felt terrible for being so self-centered. This was Hattie; Hattie was such a huge part of my life. I should have done better.”

As part of her gradual epiphany, Emma realizes that another relationship she has let slide is her friendship with her sister-in-law, Hattie. Hattie’s importance to Emma increases the dramatic irony when Emma discovers that Hattie was driving the car that hit Dan.

“We worked and we hustled and we moved through our days at a frantic pace—for what? To pass each other like worker bees.”

Three repeats into that fateful Monday, Emma has this realization about what her life has become. The image of the bees reflects her busy distraction but also the sense that she’s doing the same thing over and over and misses her connection to many of the important people in her life: her husband, her children, and Hattie.

“It was her fault—all of this, every time I lived through this day, it was her fault. If she’d never been here, Dan would never have died the first time and set this never-ending day in motion.”

The revelation that Hattie was driving the car increases the dramatic tension but proves a pivotal moment for Emma’s character arc. After her initial confusion and despair, she becomes fixated on blaming Hattie for Dan’s death, and her inability to forgive keeps her in the time spiral for a long time.

“Nothing mattered. Nothing made any difference. He always died. I couldn’t stop it. He always died.”

This passage comes at a low point in Emma’s character arc, when she realizes that she can’t control the outcome of the day. The repetition of the words conveys that her actions are useless and captures the spiral of despair and hopelessness she’s caught in, mirroring the repeating days.

“It was all so easy, so straightforward. Our relationship had always felt just right.”

As Emma relives Dan’s death daily, her realization of her attachment to him heightens the novel’s tension and emotion. With this realization, at the beginning of Part 3, Emma shifts out the spiral of despair and begins acting on her real priorities and repairing her relationships, reflecting two of the novel’s key themes.

“I chucked the paper in our kitchen bin, seeing ripped-up paper with Dan’s handwriting. The disappointed letter that had broken my heart so many times. I smiled as I stared at it now, torn up into tiny pieces.”

The turning point in Emma’s character arc comes when, at Jas’s suggestion, she begins to view her endlessly repeating time as a gift. The ripped-up letter shows that she’s succeeding in reconnecting with Dan.

“You can’t shoulder it all. You can’t just checklist the day away.”

Dan’s more recent letters frequently remind Emma that she’s drifting away from her family, giving her attention to other people and other things. This image of her being preoccupied with her checklist echoes Emma’s previous realization about absorption in her to-do list.

“My need for everyone else to like me, to feel that I was doing a great job, meant I hadn’t always been focused on [my family]. Pretending to be present, as my mind flitted over the thousand jobs in my head. In this reality I forced myself to really listen, to engage with what [my kids] were telling me.”

This passage crystallizes what Emma has learned: how to be present in her own life and how to spend her time on actions that are meaningful. This change in her behavior captures the turning point in her character arc as she makes the time to connect with her husband and children.

“Hattie hadn’t begun any of this. It was always going to happen. The heaviness I’d been dragging around dissolved, the last of my anger left.”

Despite her kind actions for others, Emma’s situation changes when she reaches out to Hattie, comforts her friend in her distress, and stops blaming her for the day’s events. The combined lessons of forgiveness, connecting, and being present help Emma finally break the loop.