You Cannot Mess This Up cover art

You Cannot Mess This Up

A True Story That Never Happened

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About this listen

It's 2014, and Amy Daughters is a 46-year old stay-at-home mom living in Dayton, Ohio. She returns to her hometown of Houston over the Thanksgiving holiday to discuss her parents’ estate and finds herself hurled back in time.

Suddenly, it’s 1978, and she is forced to spend 36 hours in her childhood home with her nuclear family, including her 10-year old self. Over the next day and a half, she reconsiders every feeling she’s ever had, discusses current events with dead people, gets over-served at a party with her parents’ friends, and is treated to lunch at the Bonanza Sirloin Pit.

Besides noticing that everyone is smoking cigarettes, she’s still jealous of her sister, and there is a serious lack of tampons in the house. Amy also begins to appreciate that memories are malleable, wholly dependent on who is doing the remembering.

In viewing her parents as peers and her siblings as detached children, she redefines her difficult relationships with her family members and, ultimately, realizes that her life story matters and is profoundly significant not so much to everyone else, perhaps, but certainly to her.

Amy’s guide said her trip back in time wouldn’t change anything in the future, but by the time her 36 hours are up, she’s convinced that she’ll never be the same again.

©2019 Amy Weinland Daughters (P)2019 Amy Weinland Daughters Fiction Science Fiction Time Travel Tobacco
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Really enjoyed this book. It went off on a tangent that I wasn't expecting and it was a very 'easy' listen. In the same way when having coffee with a friend and they are telling you about their recent trip. The characters were at times the polar opposite to what I was expecting and the main characters response to them was also not the prescribed norm under the circumstances, but that actually made this book better.

I also really liked that this book was read by the author, it gave it validity. Well done Amy on the book and audio version!

This strangely isn't a criticism, but I will mention it because I know for some people it could be an issue.

The audio version has not been correctly edited.

There are re-reads in there that I have never heard on audible before.

For me this wasn't actually a negative.

I think we have become accustomed to the perfection of voice actors reading to us and I know that when I'm listening to an audible book I rarely think about the actor / actress reading the book, with the occasional falter it made the narrative more real, the reader more human, it was more personal and also made me think about how hard it is to read a whole book straight through.

The epilogue was spot on and I loved the way that at the end the real journey fitted back in and made sense.

I would definitely reccomended this book to other people.

Thank you for keeping me company while I was working today. 🙂


**Edit**

I've just relistened to this book and the above still holds true.

I'd also recommend it for anyone who didn't have the best relationship with a parent growing up.

The cathartic experience that was gained by Amy WD writing it might help other people who need to come to terms with their own childhoods and move on.

Quirky, unexpected and comforting.

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Quite a nice story. The narrator kept making mistakes,. Some subjects should not be included

Not the best

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