Feels Like the First Time

BOOK SYNOPSIS:

Blink and your life’s halfway over. What if that happens literally?

College party girl Emily Murray bounces through majors and boys until an ill-advised art major leads her to a rebellious relationship with an aspiring rock star. When her father cuts off the college fund—and her boyfriend ditches her to chase a record deal—Emily spirals, hard.

One shaved head and emotional black out later, she wakes up thirty years in the future, living a life she doesn’t recognize as a successful therapist and engaged to a total stranger.

With no apparent way to rewind the clock, Emily scrambles to make sense of her new reality. With a wedding date looming and a competitive therapist threatening her fragile career, Emily is forced to question: Was this really the future she was meant for?

Witty, sharp and unexpectedly heartwarming, Feels Like the First Time, the highly anticipated follow up to This Time Around, is a love letter to our younger selves, reminding us that even when we feel lost, we often end up exactly where we need to be.

My Review:

Feels Like the First Time

~Kimberly Packard

Feels Like the First Time by Kimberly Packard is a neon-lit dive back into the 90’s college scene, that gloriously chaotic era of grunge music, garage bands, late-night diner runs, and life choices that probably should have come with warning labels. While this is the follow-up to This Time Around, it can absolutely stand on its own, though I’d still highly recommend reading the first book for the full emotional experience.

Emily is your classic college student: convinced she has life figured out while simultaneously holding everything together with duct tape and caffeine. She’s navigating divorced parents with expectations she considers wildly unrealistic for HER future, all while changing majors often enough to make her father question every life decision he’s ever made. Her boyfriend, Wick, is the lead singer of a band teetering on the edge of making it big, and Emily is right there beside him, emotionally invested, physically exhausted, and carrying the sound equipment by herself. But when Wick signs that “big deal” and disappears without so much as a goodbye, Emily’s world gets flipped upside down and then hurled straight into the future. Literally.

Packard delivers a beautifully crafted cast of characters who balance each other perfectly on the page. Emily is sharp, self-aware, emotionally messy in the most believable way, and trying desperately to figure out how to balance independence with love. Wick is equal parts charismatic and infuriating, driven almost entirely by ego and ambition. Meanwhile, Josie and Sophia step in as the kind of supportive best friends every emotionally spiraling college student needs in their corner.

Packard’s writing flows effortlessly between timelines without ever feeling jarring or confusing. The humor and emotional depth are perfectly balanced, creating moments where you’re laughing one second and then suddenly staring into space thinking, wait… did that really just happen? This is very much a character-driven story rather than an action-heavy one, built on emotional honesty, nostalgia, and deeply relatable relationships. The plot twist leans less toward shocking drama and more toward emotional realism, where the quiet moments of realization and the painful lessons that come with learning to choose yourself first deliver the strongest impact.

Overall, Feels Like the First Time is a story about discovering whether you’re truly the main character in your own life, or just playing a supporting role in someone else’s.

I would like to thank Lone Star Literary Life and Kimberly Packard for the opportunity to Alpha/Beta/ARC for Feels Like the First Time. As always, all opinions and reviews are of my own volition. I have not been promised any compensation by the author or publisher for a fair and honest opinion.

GIVEAWAY LINKS

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AUTHOR WEBSITE & ADDITIONAL LINKS:

Kimberly Packard is an award-winning author of women’s fiction and romance.

When she isn’t writing, she can be found planning her next trip, asking her dog what’s in his mouth or curled up with a book. She resides in Texas with her husband Colby, a clever cat named Oliver and a precocious black lab named Tully.

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