Twelve Months and a Day

by Louisa Young

A poignant, modern love story about a young widow and widower and the two ghosts that bring them together because although love changes form, it never dies.

Two couples. Four unfinished lives. A love that transcends space and time.

Rasmus and Jay, Róisín and Nico: two couples, strangers to each other. Two beautiful, ordinary love stories, cut short. Both in their thirties and too young to be widowed, Róisín swears she still feels Nico beside her in bed and Rasmus hears Jay as he writes songs at the piano.

Jay and Nico don’t even believe in ghosts, yet here they still are. Still in love with Rasmus and Róisín. And maddeningly powerless. Until Jay has an idea that Nico wants no part of—bringing Róisín and Rasmus together. It’s crazy enough that it just might work, but playing matchmaker to the living is no easy feat and one that will require all four of them to discover the meaning of love after loss, and the importance of fighting for happiness against all odds.

Moving and thought-provoking, playful and bittersweet, Twelve Months and a Day asks what is love? And what are we to do with it?

Genres: Romance, Fiction, Contemporary, Magical Realism, Audiobook, Fantasy, Death

384 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2022

About the author

Louisa Young is a history graduate, and worked as a journalist for British national newspapers and magazines for some years. Her first book was A Great Task of Happiness (1995), the life of Kathleen Bruce, her grandmother, the sculptor and wife of Scott of the Antarctic. She followed that with her Egyptian trilogy of novels: Baby Love (which was listed for the Orange Prize), Desiring Cairo and Tree of Pearls. They were followed by The Book of the Heart, a cultural history of our most symbolic organ. She has also published the Lionboy trilogy of children’s novels, written with her then ten-year-old daughter under the pseudonym Zizou Corder and two further children's novels, Lee Raven Boy Thief and Halo. .
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Her 2011 bestseller My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2011 and the Wellcome Book Prize, was a Richard and Judy Book Club choice, and the first ever winner of the Galaxy Audiobook of the Year. It was followed by two sequels, The Heroes' Welcome and Devotion, and a memoir, You Left Early: A True Story of Love and Alcohol, about her relationship with the composer Robert Lockhart.

Her most recent book is a novel, Twelve Months and a Day.

She lives in London.

http://www.louisayoung.co.uk/about.html

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was GLORIOUS (…..and tender, unique, insightful, & will likely split your heart wide open.)

My 1st 5 star book of the year!
Such spectacular writing and narration. There’s music, so be sure to listen to the audiobook because it’s so, so special.

What happens to love after loss? And how does one navigate forward through grief? I promise it’s not all sad.

People will be talking about this one.

[Sarah | Kerosene.Lit · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really touching story focusing on grief. But what made it especially unique was the magical element. It's told through four characters: a widow, a widower ... and their ghost partners!

With that said, I spent some time overwhelmed trying to keep these characters straight. I was constantly having to remind myself who was the partner of who. It was definitely the type of story that took all my concentration.

But I was so moved by the way death was explored, especially with the insight of a ghost struggling to accept their partner finding love again. I didn't quite feel connected to the romance between Rasmus and Róisín, but the themes in this story were beautifully written. Overall I enjoyed this one.

(heat level: closed door)

[Lyon.Brit.andthebookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thought of even writing this review is making me nervous …
I absolutely loved this book… talking about life and death is very hard for me… I’m a very anxious person… and this story hit moments where I had to set it down and revisit, even though I was truly captivated, it offered so much… love after loss, grief and how it looks along the way and how it ages with time. I’m promising you… take a chance suspend your beliefs and feel these characters…

A list of loves
- Music industry
- Food.. I could go for a fish & chip right now
- Diversity
- Silly banter
- Epistolary… email chains that will have you weeping, smirking & laughing

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a different kind of story and I really enjoyed it! I love books with magical realism elements and the premise of this love after loss romance in which two widows are matched up by the ghosts of their dead partners was fantastic!

Great on audio narrated by the author's daughter and filled with original songs. I highly recommend the audio experience for this one and think it would be perfect for fans of books like Ashley Poston's The dead romantics or The invisible husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley.

Much thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and @prhaudio for early complimentary copies in exchange for my honest review!

CW: surprise pregnancy, sudden loss of loved ones, death due to sarcoidosis

[Emily | emilyisoverbooked · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Putnam for the copy of this ARC.

What a unique and lovely story from Louisa Young. Two couples, Rasmus & Jay and Róisín & Nico, are brought together when both Jay and Nico pass away. Rasmus and Róisín are left in their grief after losing their partners, and Jay and Nico are both left hanging in the balance as ghosts, invisible to all others except each other. The balance of these stories is beautiful - both melancholic and promising. I absolutely loved this one - consider picking it up!

Read if you like:
- The Two Lives of Lydia Bird, The People We Keep, or The Dead Romantics
- Sad romances
- Stories of people coming together through grief
- The healing power of music
- The stories behind tattoos

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to enjoy this book, I really did. It’s undeniable that Louisa Day is a good writer, constructing rich and pleasurable narratives with ease. Nor is there anything wrong with the characters - the weary washed-up musician Rasmus, the earnest filmmaker Roisín, and their dead partners Jay and Nico (who, of all of them, perhaps feels the most real in his jealousy from beyond the grave and unwillingness to let Roisín go, as opposed to Jay, who plays the caring and too-sympathetic dead wife role perhaps too much for my liking). I think if anything I dislike the narrative form - halfway through the novel there is a switch in style, and from here onwards much of the book is told through emails. This just … doesn’t work for me. Maybe it works for other people! It really is a shame, though, because I’d be interested to read Day’s other work.

[Kaytee · Rating 1 out of 5]

This Demi Moore Patrick Swayze ghost-Esque story of two couples who navigate death and new love started with great promise and interest. The characters are distinctive and have interesting lives and situations and the start of the book when they die and are surprised to find themselves as ghosts is fun as well as thought provoking. Sadly however, the tale quickly runs out of energy, fun and steam and becomes boring and relentlessly miserable.
It dwells far too much on the backstories of how the couples meet instead of the more interesting present about how they cope with what’s happened. The pace also slows to glacial speed and almost nothing happens and the story is pages and pages of skippable exposition full of long lingering looks and very dull conversations that I found pretentious not clever. Then when the writer does finally address their present situations, predictably and lazily all she dies is write in a bunch of pregnancies and snotty babies. URGH
TLDR summary. Don’t bother.

[Katie Mcsweeney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t love this one. I found the Irish character to be a bit off … basically an English girl who had been given some twee Irish phrases and some stereotypical Irish backstory. I wonder if the same were true of the Greek and Ghanan characters. Why did the author choose to include all these nationalities… it might have made the story stronger if the characters weren’t being outlined by national stereotypes.

As a live story it was very sweet though.

[Felicia Svensson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Älskade hur den var skriven i början, som en lång vacker dikt. Dock avtog min känsla snabbt när det började skickas brev av någon anledning. Kunde aldrig riktigt fastna på samma sätt efter det tills eftertexten. Slutsats: tror jag skulle älska biografin hon skrivit

[Mainey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Varsha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grief never goes away, but eventually we’re able to make way for some happiness to shine through. This book is beautiful and anyone who has lost someone will be able to relate to this story.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

At its core, this story was a beautiful, complex, and layered ballad about what grief looks like—how it feels along the way and how it ages with time.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this book, as I was quite skeptical at first, with the whole ghost thing and all. The way Louisa Young makes these characters feel so real is incredible—I feel as if I know each of them in a particularly personal way. I think that’s because Young allows the reader to experience each character’s grief alongside them, and in doing so, creates a connection from each character to each reader.

So much within these pages was relatable, and the character development did not disappoint for even a moment. It has so many elements…music, poetry, bad jokes, food, funny stories, geographical diversity, strong internal dialogue, email chains, and a few twists that I did not expect. Ultimately, it’s a story about healing, and I really liked it.

[Niki McDowell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you Net Galley for this arc, in exchange for my honest review.

This was a slow book for me overall. I was very interested in the premise of two heartbroken people who are being guided toward each other by their dead lovers. The difficulty in the journey back to some sense of normalcy, is felt throughout the book.

There were a few things that took me a while to get through this book though.

The different perspectives were a bit jumbled at times. Locations bounced back and forth, as well as perspectives, with much of the book lost in a sea of email exchanges. The email dialogue became really long at times and I found myself wanting to skim over those sections. Their similar names of Roisin and Rasmus also took a while to get used to.

Not all was lost though. It was a deeply moving perspective of what happens when you die, and how influential you can be in your loved ones lives, once you’re gone. Decent read.

[Linda Leone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Twelve Months and a Day is the story of Nico & Roisin and Rasmus & Jay.

When Roisin and Rasmus partners both die, Jay and Nico meet up in the afterlife, It was a unique story partially told by the ghosts. The other part is told by the two remaining alive and grieving people.

I have read other books with ghosts, but never one quite like this one. It was quite interesting to hear the ghosts thoughts and feelings. We normally only think of the living as grieving.

Jay and Nico come up with a plan to put their spouses together, if only for them to have someone who truly understands.

I enjoyed the story and loved the concept but found it a hard to read at times. It took quite a bit of concentration to keep it all making sense.

Thanks to netgalley and Penguin Group Putnam for the arc

[Dallas Shattuck · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very intrigued by the synopsis for Twelve Months and a Day and was really excited to read it. I fully expected to be heartbroken and sob significantly throughout it. However, I just didn't find the book very emotional. Not sure why, but I didn't connect with any characters and felt no emotions for them.

The book felt way too long and somewhat cheesy at parts (?). I also thought the author's choice to have 2 main characters with very distinct cultures, including a Black woman from Ghana and a Greek man, was strange, considering that the author is a white woman. Some of the descriptions felt a bit stereotypical.

I was really hoping to love this one, but it really wasn't for me.

Thank you Putnam Books for the gifted copy!

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a book! For me, it had a slow start, and I almost did not pick it back up- but I’m glad I did!

This book has such a fascinating story. A man and woman die and leave behind their widows, they meet in spirit and decide to get their widows together if only to have each other. There is so much depth throughout the story, though, and I was surprised by it! So many well said thoughts on grief and love.

I thought the ending was lovely too!

[Sarah AF · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a beautiful and tender exploration of grief and with a completely fresh perspective.

The juxtaposition between the two couples separated by death, one sudden and one known, was used really well in demonstrating the consuming nature of grief. However the circumstances, the vastness of that hole in your life exists equally and tragically. The struggles of Róisín and Rasmus in trying to find meaning and purpose to keep moving forward with life when the substance of their lives was gone was so emotionally told.

What made this book so unique though was the fact that half of the narrative belonged to ghosts. Ghosts are nothing new in literature, but to explore ghosts with the perspective of their own loss and grief very much was and added so many layers to this book. I felt, initially, that Nico and Jay meeting in the (?) afterlife and Jay's machinations to bring Rasmus and Róisín together felt a tad "caper"-y which, tonally, did feel off in what had been a very emotional exploration of death and loss from both sides of the life-death divided. However, once the two dynamics started to settle into familiarity, there was a real poignancy to the writing as Jay and Nico struggled with the feelings of being adrift from the people that they love, watching their lives move on in a way that they can't.

Whether Nico and Jay were ghosts or metaphors for Róisín and Rasmus' grief, losing their grasp on their lingering existence as Nico and Jay forged their connection through their shared grief and understanding, this was just a gorgeous exploration of how precious and fragile life is and how, ultimately, the only option is to keep putting one foot in front of the other without diminishing the feelings that created the consuming pain of loss in the first place.

In the words of Louisa Young, "It wasn't that the grief wasn't there. It's just that space had been made for happiness."

[Susan • BryantParkBooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twelve Months and a Day is a beautiful, romance about two couples, Rasmus and Jay, and Roisin and Nico. Both very much in love; they each have a terrible thing in common. They have experienced death much too early- both Jay and Nico pass away tragically young.

They leave behind Rasmus and Roisin, both strangers to each other. But (stay with me here) the ghosts of Jay and Nico have a plan to get their former loves together. Rasmus and Roisin are brought together through music and Rasmus’s musical career. Their friendship is so sweet and a lot of the story is told though emails to each other. They really open up to each other as they really understand the grieving process.

This is absolutely a book you will need to read with a box of tissues nearby and I would also really encourage the audiobook for this novel. The author’s daughter is the narrator and she sings so many of the songs so beautifully. It really made the book even more special. I also loved that the couples were so multicultural. Roisin was an Irish woman, Jay was a Ghanaian woman who lived in rural Scotland, Nico is Greek and they all blended so well.

Thank you so much to @putnambooks and @prhaudio for my gifted book and audiobook. I also read this along with @aotmbookclub and it was a fun book to read together. Twelve Months and a Day is out January 31!

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very sweet and different love story.

Rasmus loses his wife, Jay; while Róisín loses her partner, Nico. Jay and Nico meet on the other side. They decide to push their partners to meet. What happens next is Rasmus and Róisín developing a friendship that moves into more.

So I enjoyed this one, though I feel like it would have been better read not listened to. There are chunks that are letters between the characters and I had a hard time staying connected.

I liked seeing Rasmus and Róisín work through their grief. And work to move forward with their lives. I liked (though that feels like a weird word) seeing two young people dealing with grief and loss and having to deal with all the accompanying feelings/emotions.

Overall an enjoyable story but would recommend reading (3.5/3.75)

[Whitney Ellison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book’s plot had every opportunity to be cheesy as hell. But my curiosity got the best of me and I grabbed it off the library shelf anyways. I am so glad I did. This was my first Louisa Young read and I had a hard time putting it down. It was wonderfully written, both in craft and in plot order. I loved the complexity of the quadruple stories intertwined between two realms- the living and the dead. I loved the death scenes. They were troubling but didn’t sink you before you got into the book. They folded into the plot just right. I don’t always wish for this, but sometimes it’s so nice when all the characters, including the mother in law, are likable. These characters were likable but not basic. They were complex and each existed in unique spaces of grief and love that complimented each other well. Despite the unrealistic plot, the story unraveled in a realistic nature, and I was very satisfied with the ending. Great, entertaining fiction read.

[Kayla · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled to get through this one. The concept was interesting, and I was excited to read it based on the synopsis. Unfortunately, I didn't find any of the characters particularly compelling to read about, and I didn't enjoy the writing style at all. I was bored a lot of the way through, and kept hoping it would get more interesting. I really don't like to DNF a book, so I pushed through, but was then very disappointed with the abrupt ending as well. I've not read anything else from this author, so it could be a "me" thing and maybe her writing style just doesn't resonate with me. All in all though, this was a big miss for me unfortunately.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Twelve Months and a Day, two people are brought together by the ghosts of their dead partners.

As you could guess, this is for fans of sad romances. I always feel comforted by books that include younger people dealing with grief over the loss of a loved one. Louisa Young's writing is wonderful and the story was unique enough to keep me engaged. The characters are loveable and relatable. There wasn't a ton of romance in the book, so if you're looking for romance specifically, this might not be the book for you. I thought the way the romance was written made the book more realistic.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the premise of this. Two young couples both lose their partners and the surviving pair meet up shortly after. The partners come back as ghosts. When I read the summary, I thought the ghosts might be very subtle and rattle doors etc but they have thoughts and feelings and whole chapters dedicated to them. It’s hugely sad and their journeys as they deal with their grief are conveyed well. I liked the ghost characters slightly more and found Rasmus a bit irritating at times.

[Ashley A · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fell in love with this book while I was reading it. A random pick up from the library and it exceeded my expectations! The first 50 pages were a bit slow and the writing style wasn’t my cup of tea. But, such a beautiful story about love and life!

[Erin Nielsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tender exploration of grief and finding meaning and purpose to life. It was told from a unique perspective and narrated by the 2 widows and also their partners/ghosts on "the other side." I liked this book, but I didn't love it. The character names were similar, and I kept having to re-read to remember who was who.

[Kate O'Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh man.. this book was so sad. Not like a captivating weeping kind of sad, but the unfathomable kind that settled into my bones and will probably be there for a while.

The premise sounded corny but it really wasn't at all. It was beautifully written and clever and unlike anything else I've read.

[Madeleine Saghir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Romance blended with supernatural - it was an interesting and unique read. It was thought provoking - about life after death and where the soul goes. It had me close to tears at parts. A beautiful book - and very well written too. Only gripe was that email exchanges made up too much of the narrative.

[Niamh · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars overall but 5 star concept

[Mindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful story, beautifully written. Loved it!

[Steph LaPlante · Rating 4 out of 5]

This made me feel many many things.