Maybe Next Time

Maybe Next Time (2023) is a work of adult contemporary fiction written by Cesca Major. In modern-day London, literary agent Emma Jacobs experiences a stressful day that ends with the death of her beloved husband, Dan, on the 15th anniversary of their first meeting. When Emma wakes up the next morning, it’s Monday again, and Dan is alive. Stuck in an endless repetition of the same day, Emma cycles through confusion, despair, and then optimism as she repairs her relationships with her family and finds perspective on what’s most important in her life.

Major is a British novelist and screenwriter who writes mystery and historical fiction as C. D. Major, women’s fiction and romance as Rosie Blake, and romantic comedies as Ruby Hummingbird. Maybe Next Time was selected for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club and was heralded as one of the most unforgettable books of the year.

This guide is based on the William Morrow hardcover first edition published in the US in 2023.

Content Warning: This guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of pregnancy loss.

Plot Summary

The novel opens with a letter from Dan to Emma, written on December 7, 2007, the one-year anniversary of when they met (December 3, 2006). Dan describes meeting Emma on the London tube (subway) and how excited he is to be dating her. In the next chapter, narrated in the first person from Emma’s perspective, it’s the evening of December 3, 2021, and Dan is upset because Emma forgot to write him a letter to celebrate their anniversary. He takes the dog for a walk, and Emma hears a crash.

The narrative returns to that morning, describing Emma’s hectic day. She wakes to notifications on her phone from clients and from members of a committee running a playgroup that her children (Poppy, 10, and Miles, 8) used to be part of but have long outgrown. Distracted by the many demands on her time, Emma brushes off a lunch request from Hattie, Dan’s sister and Emma’s best friend. Instead she focuses on a meeting with the publisher of an important but difficult author (a client of the literary agency she works for) to fix the trouble he caused with some insulting tweets. After talking with her young assistant, Jas, Emma remembers it’s her anniversary.

Back home, Emma’s evening is a rushed mess. The dog is sick, and the children are fighting. Dan makes dinner, telling her to attend the committee meeting but wishing she’d quit. When she returns, she feels guilty and distracted throughout dinner and hides in the bathroom to write a quick letter to Dan. He’s insulted by her lack of attention and takes the dog out for a walk. When Emma hears the crash and the sirens, she rushes outside, where Dan has been struck by a car and killed. Numb with shock, Emma tries to comfort her devastated children and then falls into an exhausted sleep.

Interspersed with the present narrative are anniversary letters from Dan to Emma reflecting on their lives together. He recalls their holiday in Sydney, where Emma learned she was pregnant, and how baffled and useless he felt when Poppy was a newborn. His letters are full of love and appreciation for Emma, but his letter for that day, December 3, 2021, shows how disappointed and lonely he feels that she’s distracted by other concerns and hardly has any time for her family.

Emma wakes up and, rolling over, is shocked to find Dan in bed. She’s even more shocked when she checks her phone and, receiving the same texts, realizes that it’s December 3. Warily, she goes through the same motions of the day, including a stop at the café to get a hazelnut latte and the meeting with her boss, Linda, and the ruffled publisher. She has lunch with Hattie, who seems upset too, but realizes she can’t tell Hattie that she saw her brother die. Talking with Jas, who compares her experience to the movie Groundhog Day, Emma wonders if she can alter the day’s events and prevent Dan from dying. However, that night, despite rushing her children to bed and walking out of the committee meeting, she can’t prevent Dan from walking the dog, and he’s again struck and killed.

Dan’s letters continue to reflect on their lives together, recalling the months they were apart when Poppy was a baby, and how a fall from a second-story balcony should have killed him. The accident led to their reconciliation, and ever since, Dan has worked hard to be a supportive partner. His letters are loving and admiring, recalling details about their marriage and their new house, how they survived the pandemic lockdown, and his concerns about Hattie’s misogynistic husband, Ed. He admires Emma’s kindness toward others but notes that sometimes she pays less attention to her family.

When Emma relives the same day again, she wonders if she has a brain injury. That night, she keeps Dan at home but finds him dead in their living room. Defeated at the thought that he’ll die no matter what, Emma becomes apathetic about the day she lives over and over. She realizes that she has spent too much time worrying about what others think. She blows off the meeting with the publisher, is rude to her authors, and squanders money. One night, Emma realizes that Hattie is driving the car that strikes Dan and spirals into deep despair. She realizes that she hates her job, and she quits the playgroup. Her daughter is having trouble with friends. Emma tries to avoid Dan because experiencing his death over and over is so painful.

Eventually, Emma wants something to change so much that she enacts it. She pretends it’s a normal day and performs acts of kindness, like giving audiobooks to the café barista to share with his mother and looking at authors’ submissions that Jas likes. She connects with her kids, learning to listen to their problems and help them. One night, after days of watching Hattie crash her car, Emma brings Hattie home and learns that she, too, is in distress. Something shifts when Emma stops blaming Hattie for the repeating day and instead tries to make the most of the time she has. After     Dan and Emma spend an evening ice skating with the kids and Hattie, Dan tells Emma it was a perfect day. She’s moved to reveal the experience she has been having for months, of losing him. As Emma sleeps, Dan writes one more letter, acknowledging his death, which he sees as a deferred result of his fall from the balcony. He reminds Emma he loves her and is glad they reconnected. The next morning, Emma wakes up to new sights and sounds. She rolls over in bed, and there the novel ends.