Book Review: “Meet Me On The Bridge” by Sarah J. Harris

I got a copy of this book as one of my ‘Amazon first’ books. Having said that I don’t often go for ‘love stories’ in the review for “The Letters We Keep” by Nisha Sharma, this is the second month in a row that I have chosen such a story ahead of the thrillers and other books that were available. Part of what attracted me to this one was that it was clear from the book’s description that there was going to be some sort of science fiction element to it alongside the love story side of it, and this reminded me of the excellent “Impossible” by Sarah Lotz which I read at this time of year about two years ago. While there were elements of “Impossible” that really messed with my mind, for whatever reason, I felt that I wanted, or needed, to read “Meet Me On The Bridge”.

Overall I really enjoyed “Meet Me On The Bridge” and felt that the book did a really good job to capture the challenges and emotions of the protagonist, Julia. The book largely flits between three years – 2004, 2023, and 2024. But within those years, a lot of the time is in May – often I was reading the book on the actual date or year after the actual date on which the book was set, which was a nice additional twist.

There were a few sentences that particularly stood out for me. For example,

The pressure that comes with being an only child has never felt so intense.

and

I weave my way through the closely positioned tables to the bathroom and lock myself inside a cubicle. Tears slide down my cheeks. Why is this happening to me?

and

It’s no wonder divorce rates are high when people have such unrealistic expectations about love.

and

But the dream was so detailed. He felt . . .’ ‘Real?’ ‘I was going to say “right”, but that too.’

and

All I can say from my own experience is that you shouldn’t stay with someone simply because you’re afraid of the unknown

I found the following one especially amusing as I was listening to the Audiobook version of Mark Twain’s complete collection (which, I was surprised to discover also has some science fiction and time travel elements to it, as I will discuss in another review one day) and also talk about the people who were in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the days of the atomic bombings with my students at university (which happens to be the same university, Cardiff University, that the author has also studied at),

… real-life serendipity, pointing out that Stephen Hawking shared his birth and death dates with Galileo and Einstein. A Japanese man survived two atomic bombs – Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Mark Twain’s birth and death coincided with appearances of Halley’s Comet.

The book takes us on many journeys with Julia – some more successful than others. It was genuinely enjoyable when things seemed to be going well, when,

For the first time in months, tomorrow brims with hope.

I also felt Julia’s pain when things were not going well, the desire to fix past mistakes, or the emotions when it was possible see people who has died in another timeline. I often think about these things in relation to family and friends that I have lost in recent years (for example, Peter Hood, Dim Mbapila, and Masaaki Yamada). Some of these issues were also coming up in some TV series I watching at the time – “War of the Worlds” and “Extremely Inappropriate”.

But Julia is not the only one who faces challenges and whose life changes throughout the books – there are others and, with one exception, I liked the way that this was done as, as with Julia, I felt the book did well to capture the emotions of the people. For example,

He thought he could fight his demons on his own.

The only character, or part of the storyline, I struggled with was in relation to Julia’s mother. For some reason there were parts of that storyline that I didn’t connect with or found that the science fiction element went too far. Unfortunately there was some of this towards the end of the book which made me feel that the book was coming to a weaker conclusion than I expected. Despite saying that, I would still recommend this book.