#Blogtour #guestpost: Wide Awake Asleep by Louise Wise @louise_wise @rararesources

When Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources asked if I could read and review Wide Awake Asleep by Louise Wise, I do wish I could have said yes. I’m a bit of a pushover for something a little different, and I really rather liked the look of this one. If you like the look of it too, it’s available via Amazon in the UK and US. See what you think…

Can you really be on the WRONG path in life?

No one knew she was driving on that stretch of road. No one saw her car leave the highway and crash into a watery ditch. No one heard the car’s windscreen smash or saw the tree branch come through to impale her to her seat. No one heard her screams.

Julie Compton’s life should have come to an end that day, but instead, that moment was the beginning of her new life as she wakes, unharmed, back in 1972 and primed to relive her traumatic childhood all over again. One flaw. She’s in the body of a stranger.

Journey back to the 70s and 80s England where Julie is forced to jump through the eras, occupying and controlling other people’s bodies she knew as a child. She must work out which destiny path was the wrong one all while wondering if her body, back in 2016, was dying in her car.

With each momentous change, her memories transform and she realises she’s not only changing her future but the futures of those around her. She’s finally ‘living’ but does that mean she must die?

Many thanks to Louise for sending me a quite fascinating guest post – on the connections between déjà vu, the Mandela effect and time travel…

Most of us have experienced déjà vu: a sense of an overwhelming sense of familiarity with something that shouldn’t be familiar at all. For example, you are in a foreign country for the first time, and maybe you’re touring a certain city and suddenly it feels like you have been in that very place before. You even know what’s around a particular corner or you know there’s a really good bar a few metres down the road.

But where does this déjà vu come from?

My dad said to me once, ‘If that was the end of us when we died, it’d be a waste’. We were talking about reincarnation at the time. But what if these déjà vu moments were a remembrance of a past life?

What my dad said stuck with me, and even though common sense tells me we pass down knowledge from generation to generation BEFORE we die, there’s that little niggly thought that tells me what if déjà vu and reincarnation were connected?

You’re probably familiar with the concept of time-travel; seen the movies and read the books and all that jazz, but during writing Wide Awake Asleep I came across another dimension to it—the Mandela effect.

What the heck is the Mandela effect, I hear you cry. Well, this phenomenon happens when someone has a memory of something that has never actually happened. But the memory is there all the same. And what makes it stranger is that many people—strangers, even—can have this exact same memory with the exact same details… but it’s false. It never happened.

And the very reason this is called the Mandela effect is because many people remember Nelson Mandela dying in the 80s. They can collectively remember his funeral. They were strangers, had never met, yet all had a memory of the great man dying in prison in the 1980s when, in fact, he lived for many more years.

Some have speculated that these false memories are caused by parallel universes spilling into our own, which the writer in me wants to believe. Others simply explain the phenomenon as a failure of collective memory; rather like hearing gossip (and we all know how far that can travel!) and believing it and thus building our own memories of it.

In Wide Awake Asleep, Julie Compton is taken back in time to relive her childhood—albeit in the body of a stranger— and writing her story made me wonder what would happen if someone relived their life but made different choices and changed not only their future, but those around them. Would it cause a Mandela type effect for everyone else?

Maybe this is why the Mandela effect happens; because time-travellers are making subtle changes that some people don’t always notice. Consider the following:

• ‘Looney Tunes or, is it, Looney Toons?’
• ‘Berenstein Bears were called the Berenstain Bears, once, I swear.’
• ‘The mascot, Rich Uncle Pennybags, on Monopoly, used to have a monocle.’
• ‘Why have they changed the spelling of Fruit Loops to Froot Loops?

Hmmm, what do you remember as correct? I challenge you to Google one or all the statements above and see where it leads you.

Thanks Louise – I’m off to Google!

About the author

Louise Wise is a British writer and has been weaving stories all her life—and for many years, she was a ‘closet writer’ with a cupboard is full of ageing manuscripts depicting fantastical romantic adventures! Most of her books have an element of romance, but tend to cross over into other genres, giving them a unique edge.

Her debut novel is the best-selling sci-fi romance Eden, which was followed by its sequel Hunted in 2013. A Proper Charlie is a romantic comedy written purely for the chick lit market, but then she decided to unite her love of all things supernatural with romance and Oh No, I’ve Fallen In Love and Wide Awake Asleep came along.

Her other works include Scruffy Trainers (a collection of short stories with a twist). She has written numerous short stories for women’s magazines including Women’s Own and Take a Break. She loves hearing from her readers – the good, the bad and the ugly stuff they want to share!

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