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In "For Once in My Life" by Marianna Kavanagh, two people, Tess and George, are destined to be with each other, but first have to find each other. If you listen to what their mutual friends say- they're soulmates. Even though they've shared several paths in life, gone to the same school and live in the same city, they have never met. Their friends try to set them up multiple times over the years, but something always comes up. When they do eventually meet, Tess' theory that everyone has a soulmate somewhere out there is put to the ultimate test. Some books just have a certain emotion or feeling tied to them. In Maggie Stiefvater's "Shiver" I felt like I was sitting in the cold snow the entire time without her actually doing anything to give the reader that sensation. In "For Once in My Life" Kavanagh gives the reader a feeling of calmness, almost one of comfort. Her writing is very, very pleasant and not intrusive or pushy. It's perfect for that kind of story; a calm, sweet romance story that just makes you want to crawl inside the book and cuddle everyone in it. I didn't like that Kavanagh decided not to structure the novel in too much detail and didn't put the happenings in chapters. Sometimes there are cuts that seem very random and I found myself wondering how much time had passed inbetween the paragraphs. I'm not a big fan of changing the point-of-view mid-chapter, but if you don't have chapters, it's inevitable. The novel is told from both the perspectives of Tess and George as they go through several stages of their lives and experience completely different things that turn out to shape them as people. The journey is interesting, realistic and it's extremely frustrating to notice how close they've come to meet each other so many times, but never really did. Tess is a vintage enthusiast that loves 40s style clothing and whose biggest dream is to open up a secondhand clothing business. She's a very smart, but nervous person and just overall a sweetheart. She's your typical twenty-something that doesn't really know what she wants to do with her life and is just figuring everything, even herself, out as she goes. It's impossible not to like her. The group of friends she surrounds herself with are as diverse as they are entertaining and it's just pleasant to go through her everyday life. George is an aspiring musician who dreams of his band making it big eventually. Things don't always go well for him, because in contrast to Tess, he knows exactly what he wants in life. I loved all his band mates, who are again diverse and interesting characters with all their own stories and motivations. With all characters in the novel you can tell that there was a lot of work into developing them and making them as realistic as possible. I could tell you stories from the top of my head about every single character and what they would or wouldn't do, which just makes the novel overall very, very realistic, life-like and interesting. The plot sometimes drags, but that's inevitable if you're telling someone's whole life in a contemporary novel. There isn't necessarily always something interesting happening and there is indeed some filler, but that just contributes to the realisticness. Never did I have the impression that the novel was boring me or stalling time. I would have hated the idea of Kavanagh deliberately putting unnecessary drama into the novel just so there's more action. Despite the lack of actual happenings, I was very much entertained and I read the novel pretty quickly and enthusiastically. However, some things just seem a little too corny in the novel. For example Kavanagh using George's leather jacket several times in Tess' POV to indicate that he's there even though she doesn't know him. It doesn't even make sense for her to notice the jacket and a way more elegant way would have been to just describe the same scene from George's POV. It doesn't seem very likely to me that George unknowingly has an impact on something in her life; e.g. when he's having fun in a pub and Tess hears him laugh and thinks about how unhappy she actually is with everything in her life. I get that this is a novel about soulmates and destiny, but that's just a little too corny for my taste. Overall it's a wonderful novel. It's impressive for a debut and I'm stoked on reading more of Kavanagh's work. Love the writing voice, the story idea and the marvellous character development. You won't want to put this novel down. A clear recommendation.