Before I Do Quotes
"A funny, pull-at-your-heartstrings read, this is the perfect companion for curling up with hot chocolate and a blanket."
"Unashamedly romantic and packed full of holiday sparkle, it’s a hug in book form."
"The characters in this page-turning novel are richly drawn and transform substantially."
"With its distinctive British charm and New Year’s Eve midnight magic, this swoony debut holiday love story is about two people whose paths have crossed numerous times."
"Cousens’s debut is ripe with both emotional vulnerability and zaniness."
"A brilliantly written story about love, redemption, friendship, and self-empowerment."
"A beautiful debut full of heart, soul, and serendipity with characters you can’t help but fall in love with."
"This Time Next Year will make you laugh, cry, and keep reading long into the night—it’s the escapist read everyone needs right now."
"A delightfully romantic tale of one woman’s search for her happily ever after."
"Cousens creates a world full of lovable characters who are all trying their best to be happy despite life’s many obstacles."
"A wonderfully layered story of love and loss."
"Exactly the sort of fun, pacy, beautifully written romantic story I needed."
"Reading Sophie Cousens is like meeting a new best friend."
"If he recognized her face, he must have come back and found the photos she left for him."
"An invisible string had wound them together, something not to be dealt with flippantly but to be savored."
"The patter of rain on his umbrella above them felt strangely intimate."
"I love that image, of you and your telescope, seeking out other worlds."
"Strangely, Audrey didn’t find these words reassuring. '’Til death do us part' suddenly felt like a really long time."
"Whatever had happened in the past needed to stay in the past—weddings were about the future."
"She definitely would not be fine after a good night’s sleep."
"I don’t mind if you don’t smile, just as long as you’re happy."
"I love you, Audrey, more than anything. Remember, this is just the beginning."
"Because you’re sexy and smart, and I love everything about you."
"You don’t have to be a dick to be a good kisser."
"It’s human nature to wonder what might have been. It doesn’t mean he’s the person you were supposed to be with."
"You know, I can’t think of one problem that vodka is not the answer to."
"Committing to someone for the rest of your life was a huge step. Promising not to screw up, forever, was undeniably daunting."
"In the greater context of time and space, what did her little wedding matter? Yet tonight, however much she tried to step outside herself, she couldn’t find that perspective. It did matter to her, it mattered a great deal."
"That is the last time I marry a man who wears tighter trousers than me."
"Falling in love seemed like a dangerous thing. Every time it happened to her mother, Audrey lost her family or her home. Love was not safe and warm, it was a wild wind that could rip your life apart."
"Her mind felt like stewed soup, claggy with a cocktail of emotions and vodka."
"If she had only passed that exam, gotten into that course, would she have found one of his notes? What if, what if, what if."
"She needed to get up, throw open the windows, slay the day."
"You’re lucky you have a maid of honor who’s a professional image consultant, because this image—currently needs a lot of consulting."
"Completely understandable. You want him to manage without you, but not too well."
"Seeing Fred had flung open a door, and she needed to work out how she was going to close it, for good."
"When you get off the wheel, you see everything in a whole new way, and the ride you’re on—you stop taking it for granted."
"Her mind sometimes ventured down a dark avenue without permission, and it scared her."
"No one wants to read about the princess who got everything she ever wanted—she’s tedious and dull and irritatingly smug."
"I do want to live every moment. I don’t want to wake up in fifty years with any regrets."
"Polaris is a fixed point, so you can use it to navigate. You draw the shortest line from the star to the horizon, and that’s north. She’s our celestial compass."
"Just because you leaned over the edge, it didn’t mean she actually wanted to jump."
"One thing she knew for sure—she loved the cake."
"Just taking it all in, the calm before the storm."
"Everyone else was going places, and she was going nowhere."
"I guess it’s like trying on jeans, I haven’t found my perfect fit yet."
"In this cynical world, isn’t there something wonderful about the pure, unbridled optimism of marriage?"
"Books can wait, darling, you should be out there enjoying yourself."
"In all the past versions of London, do you think there’s ever been an Audrey the Astronomer and a Fred the Photographer who sat on a bus together eating peaches?"
"It was like finding the jigsaw puzzle you fit into, when this morning she hadn’t even known she was a jigsaw piece."
"Maybe I don’t need to see that far when there’s so much to look at right here."
"Don’t marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from."
"If only I could rearrange them in a more orderly way, in a shape that made sense to me, then I would understand the story better."
"As long as someone is here to see the light they created, then they are not gone."
"I often wonder how humans can be so clever, making houses, cars, phones, pasta."
"I’m jumping out of a plane—I must be mad! But then you jump and you’re glad you did."
"I read somewhere that our universe has two hundred and eighty-five galaxies for every single human on earth, and more stars than there are grains of sand. I can never get my head around that."
"Don't make any plans for the rest of the day, or for the rest of your life."
"I think if you got to know me, you might not think me such a bad egg."
"Whether she lived here or not, Benedict was now a necessary irritation in her life, like mosquitos on a Mediterranean holiday."
"Better to see the art this way. No distractions."
"You're the most repressed girl I've ever met."
"Parkers are as Yorkshire as tea and cake, as Yorkshire as the Dales."
"Omens are the universe’s way of telling us something isn’t right."
"Three things you need in a marriage—trust, humor, and a little bedroom inspiration from Jilly Cooper."
"You follow your gut when it comes to love, or the cow’s gut, in my case."
"Because I want all of you, not just your body."
"That old troublemaker is probably trying to make you late."
"Your soul’s too heavy for one so young. You’re carrying something around with you, and you need to put it down."
"I can’t bear him, and I can’t be alone with him."
"Because he’s always touching me, he touched me in the gallery in a way I didn’t like."
"Nothing she had read mentioned the possibility of dead bats falling from the ceiling."
"I didn’t want to upset you. I thought maybe if I moved out ..."
"I read this article that said if you believe in soul mates, you’re less likely to be happy, you’re more likely to get divorced."
"Love might be easy, but relationships can be hard."
"I didn’t think anyone noticed that I did that."
"You do strange things in front of my friends too, you know."
"If there are parallel universes, with infinite possibilities, I’m glad we’ll never know about them."
"Girls like you are a disgrace. You see perversion where there is none, you distort and tangle innocent things."
"What is the world coming to, when a man cannot even compliment a woman’s body without being perceived as some kind of monster?"
"It’s not going to change how I feel about you."
"My immovable Polaris." Who could say no to that?
"All I need is you, me, five euros for chips, and the promise of a lifetime of this."
"You're supposed to be looking at the sky, not at me."
"We're all made of stardust—that's where the atoms in our bodies originally came from."
"Just because I didn’t like it, maybe that didn’t make it wrong."
"I’ve felt so guilty, every day since he left. Some days it’s so heavy, I think it’s going to pull me under."
"Nothing’s over until you stop fighting for it."
"I’m sorry, I’m afraid this ticket has been reallocated."
"You are just like your father, and he was loyal as a St. Bernard."
"Life is going to bring falling bats, heart attacks, probably even temptation from other people."
"Don’t worry, he’s still mardy and miserable. He hasn’t forgotten he’s heartbroken."
"Love and marriage, it’s a two-way street. You need more than a showy performance; you need to ask yourself what it is you bring to the party."
"You’re right. I’ve been self-involved and selfish."
"Then dig deep, and I’m sure you’ll think of something."
"It had been a grueling couple of days, but her bones sang with the warmth of purpose."
"Love is a seed. We choose to plant it, nurture it, and at the end of our lives, if we end up with a glorious old oak tree, that’s on us, not the cosmos."
"I know this is only the second wedding I’ve had, but it’s definitely my favorite."
"I don’t know if anything is meant to be, certainly when it comes to love. There could be a million versions of us out there in the multiverse where none of this worked out. Aren’t we lucky that we get to live in the world where it did?"