Ten Years On

by Alice Peterson

Rebecca is happily married to Olly and content with her job at a glamorous London art gallery. But when tragedy strikes, she decides to move back to her childhood home in the country, hoping time will help her to heal. Joe, born in the same country town as Rebecca, had a falling out with her a decade earlier. Now he's the successful owner of a wine bar, Maison Joe, and is breaking local hearts by dating a striking actress, Peta. Rebecca finds living with her parents again a challenge. Nor is it easy to discover that Joe lives and works too close for comfort. When she sees him once more, memories rush back to haunt her, along with unanswered questions about the past. Why did they lose touch? What was Olly hiding? Can Rebecca answer those questions and move on?

Genres: Romance, Chick Lit, Contemporary, Fiction, Adult, British Literature

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

At the age of eighteen Alice had been awarded a tennis scholarship to America when she experienced pain in her right hand. It was rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and she hasn’t picked up a tennis racket since, a sadness that shall always be with her. The theme of disability features in her fiction, but there is nothing gloomy about Alice or her work. Rather this gives her fiction the added dimension of true poignancy.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book when it was on-sale for Kindle for only 20p. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much, just a quick easy read that wouldn't require a lot of attention.

I couldn't have been more wrong... This book is simply wonderful!

The story is beautiful and so full of emotion. I spent the majority of time reading it crying my eyes out, and that doesn't happen often!

The author really took us on a journey with her heroine. The glimpses into the past, as well as the passage of time through the present day story are weaved together perfectly and make the story feel really three-dimensional.

The grief and sadness the heroine goes through feels genuine and the author never makes light of it.

This is a very deep and moving story about love, life, loss, and second chances that had me hooked all the way through.

Highly recommended. Bring tissues!

Originally posted at http://www.everyday-is-the-same.blogs...

[Rea Cobb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ten Years On centres around the two characters Rebecca and Joe. Rebecca is an instantly loveable and warm character who you just feel the need to wrap her up in bubble wrap and look after her!

When we first meet Joe he is definitely a ladies man but as the book progresses I found that each time Joe is around I was getting a little hot under the collar (as were most of the characters in the book!) It has been ten years since they last had contact but now Rebecca’s circumstances change and she finds herself running back to her childhood home while she recovers, the last thing she expected was for Joe to still be in the same village. They are forced to confront their past which caused them to lose contact but will they be able to move on and start a new chapter?

I am sure any of you who read Monday to Friday Man had a tear in your eye by the end of that book, well I think you will have a tear at the beginning, middle and end of Ten Years On! I have not had a real weepy book since Me Before You but the old lump in the throat definitely occurs in this book but although it is an emotional read, I didn’t find it really low and depressing. I was gripped from the start of this book and I think it is because it is such a touching and easy read which flowed at a great pace all the way through meaning I couldn’t put it down hence the reason I finished it in one sitting!

The story alternates at times back when Rebecca and Joe first knew each other and then back again to 10 years later when they re-meet. I loved this as it gave the characters more depth and gave us more insight into the relationship between the two characters. We don’t find out until a little further on as to why Rebecca and Joe lost contact but I did have an inkling as to why this could have been but this didn’t ruin the storyline or the enjoyment of the book.

It was quite clear that a little research had been done for this book as there were some very interesting references and tips when it came to wine tasting so I am assuming that the author had quite an interesting time doing research for this book!

This is a definite for all of your to be read piles a little weepy and a lot of hope this one will be pulling at your heart strings. I will definitely be reading more work in the future by Alice Peterson.

[Madelyn Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was okay, but I did have a bunch of thoughts that really stopped me from enjoying this book.

1. This book was slow. It took a while for the actual climax to arise, but there didn't seem to be a peak of this book. It was just very bland. There wasn't too much going on after Olly's death. Basically, every part after that was Rebecca trying to "fix" her life and find happiness again.

2. Because of the anti-climactic story, I found the book to be very predictable. I could pretty much guess what was going to happen from the book before I even read it. Rebecca and Olly have a stable relationship, something goes wrong which was the death of Olly she goes off the rails, and Rebecca moves back to the country in hopes of "recovery".

3. I found this book a bit boring because it was so easy to understand what was going to happen next, therefore it never left me on the edge.

But, the good parts of this book is that the characters seem quite evolved and seem to have their act together and are well developed.

This was a good fluff read that had some nice aspects such as the word building and character development, but the overall plot elements were not enjoyable. Happy Reading!

-Madelyn

[Loyalhistorian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Normal I love the "love opportunity missed then rekindled" plot. I had been looking forward to reading this book after I bought it based on the synopsis. But, it had a lot less rekindling in the story. In fact, there was less of Joe in the book than one might think. So, Rebecca is married to Olly, whom she met in university. They used to be best friends with Joe, but they lost touch with Joe ten years prior. Rebecca and Olly live in London, and then Olly is killed in a motorcycle accident. Shortly thereafter, Rebecca finds out she's pregnant with Olly's child and goes back to her hometown to live with her parents for the time being. While there, she finds out that Joe has opened a wine-tasting bar in town, and is very skeptical about seeing Joe again after so many years and to tell him that Olly is dead. You soon find out that the trio grew apart from each other because Rebecca and Joe had a one-night slip-up during university and slept together, with Olly never being told or finding out. Most of this book is more about dealing with deep-seated family issues and loneliness, rather than a romance. There's really very little romance, actually.

Here are my complaints. I could not get invested in the book for the first third of it. It took me days to get through the first 130 pages. It was slow, felt tedious. I didn't feel any emotions toward the characters. Here her husband died a tragic motorcycle death, and her sadness fell short. It felt fake, and the author didn't write it well. She hadn't developed the Olly character enough in the beginning of the book for me to be sad about it either. If she had fleshed out their relationship more at the beginning then maybe I would have had a pang of sadness myself even though Peterson didn't write the sadness well enough herself.

I enjoyed the flashbacks, and I finally got that much-needed background about the characters, and began to like Olly better, but it still didn't highlight well enough why Rebecca was in love with him. It took much later in the book before I felt anything for the Olly character. Again, it needed more fleshing out of their relationship. Most of it was stiff and stale. In fact, it highlighted more Rebecca and Joe's relationship, even though that was a one-night thing. I just thought it was crazy that I felt more for the best friend/one-night-stand guy in the book than the guy that she married and loved for ten years. It made me feel bad for Olly.

Then Olly talking to her through half of the book. Not just a presence...no, actually talking to her and having conversations with her after he's dead. It just felt strange to have that throw-in of paranormal. I got used to it, but I felt it was mostly unnecessary. Peterson could have written most of that stuff in the book some other way without having her dead husband to talk to her in her mind.

Finally the book caught my interest (mainly when they started getting into the deep-seated family issues and some of the flashbacks), and I was able to finish the last two-thirds of the book in a day. All-in-all though, I thought Peterson was terrible at writing the relationships. It took a lot for me to be interested in the characters' relationships, and many times I had a hard time seeing why any of them were in love with each other. And oh my goodness, I wanted to wring the Pippa character's neck. Ridiculous and oh-so childish. I think the best character in the book was the blind eighty-some-odd year old Janet. She was about the only character worth listening to.

[Susan Buchanan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sad, heart-wrenching and optimistic.

I had previously read Alice's Monday to Friday Man and really enjoyed it and I had been wanting to read this one for a while. I raced through this book. Although the subject matter is different, it tugged at the heartstrings in the same way that Jojo Moyes' Me Before You did. I felt the relationships between Olly and Rebecca, Rebecca and Joe and Joe and Olly were very well dealt with indeed. But always there was an undertone of why did they fall out? Why didn't they see each other for more than 10 years? The author did well to keep this from us until more than half way through the book, and it keeps us reading. Rebecca confides in her friend her difficulty in seeing Joe after all this time, but is persuaded to apply for a job in his wine bar. As they get closer, the past is finally addressed. Lots of misunderstandings are righted and they both realise that over the years their perceptions have been wrong. Rebecca hears Olly talk to her, giving her advice and chatting to her from far away.
I also liked the little old lady who went on the wine course and the valuable advice she could give to Rebeccca, even about love. Can the three main characters learn to forgive and move on?
This novel is an easy read, which pulls you in and doesn't let go until the last page. I will be downloading Alice's other books soon. Very impressed with this - it didn't feel like just regular chicklit but had some life lessons to teach us and dealt very well with the topic of grief.

[Lili · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very sweet, unimpressively written story. A lovely way to spend my Saturday afternoon and evening, but not anything remarkable.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautiful, beautiful story.


This book was brilliant, an incredibly soppy love story, based around the life of Rebecca. After losing her husband Olly in a motorbike crash, her life comes tumbling down around her. Unsure of where to go or what to do, she decides that it's best to go back to her family home, with her mother and father. Once there, Rebecca finds out that she is pregnant with Olly's baby, and as well as that, after speaking to an old, homeless man out in the street, she is suddenly hearing Olly's voice in her head.


Confused, alone and upset, Rebecca hears from a friend that down the street there's a wine bar called 'Maison Joe', which is coincidentally ran by Joe, a face from Rebecca's teenage years, and at one point, her and Olly's best friend. As haunting memories flood back into Rebecca's mind, she realises that even though she hasn't seen Joe for such a long time, she should have found it in her heart to invite him to Olly's funeral. After debating with herself about whether or not to tell Joe, she arrives at his bar, and asks to speak with him. Letting Joe know that Olly is no longer around, Rebecca is taken back all those years ago, to her flat, to the moment when she suddenly found herself falling for Joe...

This a beautiful story about love, loss and friendship. It shows the reader that life can indeed go on, and time just keeps on ticking. Is it okay to forgive and forget?

[Rhoda Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ten Years On by Alice Peterson
I picked this book up because of a Twitter conversation I had with@Alicepeterson1. (Does Twitter sell books? Yes, but not in any direct way). I read the sample chapter and it looked interesting, so I downloaded it.
This book is more about bereavement and grief than romance. Becca’s husband Olly dies suddenly, leaving her alone and pregnant with their first child. Becca must learn to cope with her loss while adjusting to the fact that she’s going to be a mother. For me, the most poignant and true line in the book is when Glitz says “it doesn’t get easier, you just get better at dealing with it” (I paraphrase, but that’s the gist of it).
The ten years on bit is about Becca’s friendship with Joe, who was also Olly’s best friend when they were all at university together. You get to see Joe as he was when he was in his twenties and then when he is in his thirties. He is the romantic hero in the book and is very likeable.
The dialogue is lively, the characters are well drawn. The embedded flashbacks are a little distracting as it took me a few seconds to twig when we’d got back into the present. It’s not light and fluffy chick lit. It’s about love and loss and families and friends. I really enjoyed reading this book.

[BestChickLit.com · Rating 4 out of 5]

First things first: this one isn’t a romantic comedy! It’s romantic, it’s emotional, but it’s going to make you cry rather than laugh, so if your Chick Lit tastes swing more to Bridget Jones than The Notebook, this one might not be for you. Having said that, it’s still an absorbing read with some interesting stuff. The look into the new family dynamics of an adult moving back in with their parents was very well done, and Rebecca and her sister Pippa’s clashes over settling into a different way of being family to each other were great. You are drawn into Rebecca’s slow progress of getting back into living life and really rooting for her.

The flashbacks to university life added some pep to leaven the good but obviously not a cheerful grieving process. It wasn’t hard to guess in advance the root of Rebecca’s issues with Joe, but when the reveal did arrive it was an exciting scene. Possibly Joe could have been a bit more developed; there’s perhaps not a great deal to his character than ‘reformed bad boy’, but he’s certainly still an appealing reformed bad boy. The eventual resolution seemed right and not in too much of a rush, which would have jarred a bit with the more contemplative tone of the rest of the book.

Reviewed by Gina Tredwell on behalf of BestChickLit.com

[Preet · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book opens with Rebecca, Olly, and Joe making predictions about where they will be in ten years time. Fast forward ten years and the next thing you know Rebecca is moving home to live with her parents. What happened to the three close friends?

Wowza! I've had this book sitting among my gigantic to be read pile since last year. I just picked it up now and I'm wondering why I didn't pick it up long before now. I will warn you that this book made me cry, and not a pretty cry, but not really an ugly cry either.

I had my guesses as to what had happened to the close friends and what would happen in the book and I was right more than wrong, but there is something in Alice Peterson's writing that just made this book magical.

I read this book in what feels like almost time and I eagerly turning the pages to find out what was going to happen next. There are some really lovable characters that you'll need to discover for yourself. This is the first book of Alice Peterson's that I've read and I know for sure it won't be the last. Time to dig the rest of her books out of the to be read piles. :)

[Neon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across this book accidentally. I was in a book story and i was browsing. I was in lit section and got a call and while i was on the phone i absently picked this up and started reading it. I ended the call but was still reading. I was intrigued by the story and characters and in way i was expecting the book to be in a certain way. I got the book and finished it on the same day and loved it. The story is familiar yet different in a good way. Its a romantic drama with tragic and i really really loved the relationships between the characters. Rebecca and Olly. It was very sweet and i liked the relation between Olly and Joe too and three of them and then Joe and Rebecca. It is a lovely read. Wish there was more story of Joe and Rebecca and even for that matter Olly's. Its a very nice read.

[Nat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read and enjoyed Alice Peterson's previous book 'Monday to Friday Man', I was looking forward to reading this one. I was not disappointed, this was such a great book, dealing with the very sensitive and very well-known subject to me - grief.
It was a lovely story, with ultimately an uplifting message, and it had characters that I really cared for from the start. I have read this in just over a day - exceptionally quick for me at the minute!
I would highly recommend this, and look forward to her next book.

[Emma-Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cleverly written, this novel is extremely powerful and deals with the subject of losing a close one very well. I couldn't put the book down, I was sucked in to Rebecca's life and really felt like I was on her journey with her.
Grief is a very difficult subject to breach but Alice Peterson did it in such a gentle and clever way, and that's what makes this novel brilliant.

Definitely recommended! However, not recommended for reading on the tube as I almost started blubbing in front of all the commuters!

[Tanya · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be honest, the only reason I didn't stop reading was because I have to know what happens in every book I read, it was very very predictable and I found it so slow and dragging on. When I got to the last bit, I was waiting for the Big Bang, fireworks, you know what every romance book has but it was a huge let down. I love my books but sadly this one is not staying on my book shelf. No excitement whatsoever and too predictable.

[Laura Walin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this from teh Goodreads recommendations flow, and I must say for teh first time I am very disappointed. A very lame made-to-be sentimental story where nothing - I mean not a thing - came as a surprise. Paper thin characters and a boring plot - rarely do I regret using time in reading, but now I do.

[Bookevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay. It's official. Alice Peterson is now one of my favourites. Such a heartwarming novel. Loved it!

[Stacey Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book by Alice, loved it :) x

[Elaine Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was predictable but a good easy read - chic lit x

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book, loved it!

[Jen Banks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Made me cry. Nuff said.

[Hollie-Anne Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Ten Years On' is an overwhelmingly honest exploration of grief. The amount of time and effort that has gone into the research and consolidation of everything the writer wanted to voice is evident in every chapter. I read this book from cover to cover and in that time I cried a great deal, but I don't feel sad, I feel enlightened and grateful to have experienced what these characters are to each other and how beautifully they suffer through what we are all eventually faced with the need to. It also spreads awareness of the damage that can be done when family members don't understand each other. Throughout these chapters, the author ingeniously threads the past, the present, the internal voices and the external actions of these characters amongst each other. This has the effect of highlighting how our choices are never black and white, how our memories have their say in our futures and most elegantly how those we love are always there even when they can't stand beside us anymore.
Before I found this book while charity shopping I had never heard of it and now I feel the need to say that you should find yourself a copy.

[Beccabeccabooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

𝑵𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒖𝒔 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕'𝒔 𝒈𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒐𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒐𝒘, 𝒍𝒆𝒕 𝒂𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒆𝒏 𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆

Becca, Olly and Joe are uni students who share a flat. Becca and Olly are in a relationship, but one drunken night Becca and Joe hook up. That's the last they see of each other for ten years. In the meantime, Becca and Olly marry and are saving for the future.

Until Olly dies in a motorcycle accident. Grieving, Becca returns to her hometown to rest and reconnect with her past. However, she didn't expect Joe to turn up in her life once more...

𝕥ꫀꪀ ꪗꫀꪖ𝕣ડ ꪮꪀ really touched my heart. Whilst different from previous novels, Alice Hartman has again delivered the feels. You will really care about the characters by the end.

[Karen Keane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Alice Peterson as a writer, her books can't really be classed as 'chick lit' as they always have some type of theme behind them, this book was about bereavement and the grieving process. That been said, although the book was emotional it did have it's funny moments and I really enjoyed all the family dynamics within it. I liked Rebecca as the main character and really found myself drawn into her life.

[Riri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know what to say about his book really. It felt nostalgic. It was different than the current Generation of writers and that's what I like about it.

The writing style was hard for me to get into, I wasn't sure of the time jumps and I had to turn back the page wondering if I missed something and I also came to like that. the specificity of it is what I fell in love with the most.

I love this book.

[Lucy Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a sweet romance!

This was a fabulous book and I am still recovering from the ending. My goodness this author knows how to whip the rug from under my feet. I had my head in my hands at one point. I loved the premise and the characters were great too. Well done to the author - loved it!

[Natalie Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars
This was a sweet story about finding yourself and love after an unexpected heartbreak. I loved Joe's character but I think the story could have gone a little deeper into the heartbreak of losing someone. Also, I didn't really like the fact that "Ollie" was talking.

[A Red Headed Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Your very typical, very predictable love story. But for me, I personally loved it as it was a change from what I would usually pick up to read. Starts with some shocking chapters but always ends in the same happily ever after way :)

[Goosegirl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice Peterson should be far more well known in my humble view. Every book she has written I have completely loved and there is much more depth to her novels than the covers/marketing seems to want to communicate. I just hope Peterson has a lot more coming.

[Sabrina Gilmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know why this book is not famous but I enjoyed every second of it. It felt touching and somehow nostalgic. The romance, the family drama, the city descriptions and the characters arcs… Everything is just so amazing!

[Jade Sampson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember this was the first book I brought from the works in 2013. I remember the storyline and crying for the first time at this book. I always wished they made this into a film.
This book has a special place in my heart ❤️