The Accidental Rewrite, British novelist Milly Johnson's quirky, warmhearted novel (her first published in the U.S.), follows a woman who's fed up with the story she's living and gets an unexpected chance to overhaul her narrative.
Business analyst Polly Potter is miserable: her arrogant boss and her thoughtless partner are both dragging her down. When she quits her job and flees her life, Polly ends up in a seaside Yorkshire town with a concussion, convinced her name is Sabrina Anderson--the name of the protagonist in the novel she was writing. As she recovers, helped along by retired nurse Marielle and her restaurateur son, Teddy, Polly/Sabrina tries to fill in the holes in her memory. Readers also get glimpses into Polly's early life, her hopes for motherhood, and the highly amusing errata in the beleaguered local newspaper, the Daily Trumpet.
Johnson creates a likable protagonist in Polly, who is kind, hardworking, and stubbornly optimistic despite her circumstances. She also surrounds Polly with a welcoming new community through Teddy's restaurant and Marielle, whose group of female friends (the "Mad Cows") worry that Polly is a con artist and will do anything to protect their friend. Polly is proud to use her business skills working at Teddy's restaurant, but as her personal memories resurface, she must decide if she is brave enough to step into a new story. With humor, hope, and a bit of magical thinking, Johnson takes her protagonist far beyond the Yorkshire coast and invites readers to imagine a rewrite of their own lives. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams