The Good Part, a lighthearted novel with fantasy/science fiction elements, was published in 2023 by Sophie Cousens, author of three previously published rom-coms. The Good Part was selected as an Aardvark Book Club book, and Cousens’s previous novel, This Time Last Year, was selected as a Book of the Month Book Club pick. In The Good Part, Cousens uses time travel to explore themes about relationships and valuing all of life’s moments. 

This guide references the Penguin Kindle edition (2023) of the text.

Content Warning: The source material contains mention of child loss.

Plot Summary

The Good Part follows the life of struggling 26-year-old Lucy Young, who feels like she cannot get ahead in her career or personal life. Her roommates, Julian, Emily, and best friend Zoya, all provide friction in different ways. The upstairs neighbor, Mr. Finkley, takes baths that drip water into Lucy’s room. She has been promoted from runner to junior TV researcher at her job but quickly discovers that her input is not valued and that the promotion is largely meaningless. Lucy feels far from her ideal life—one with a successful career, a beautiful home, and a loving family.

One evening, after a challenging day that includes a fight with Zoya, a terrible date, and walking in the rain because she has no money for a cab, Lucy sees a newsagent’s shop where an old woman encourages her to make a wish on a wishing machine. Lucy wishes to leap forward to the stage of life where her hard work has paid off: where she’s found love, achieved success, and left her struggles behind.

Lucy wakes in a beautifully decorated home next to a handsome man wearing a wedding ring. She discovers that she has skipped ahead 16 years and is now 42 years old with a home, a husband named Sam, and two children. She has no memory of the missing years, but she is thrilled to have the family, career, and home that she always wanted.

This excitement wears off as she realizes the consequences of skipping so many years of her life. Lucy mourns the loss of the rest of her twenties and all of her thirties. She discovers that, as well as her two living children, she gave birth to another child, Chloe, who did not survive. Having arrived at this point in her life without creating and earning these things for herself makes Lucy feel her life is hollow and undeserved.

She and her son, Felix, work together to try to find the wishing machine. Felix creates an image of the machine based on Lucy’s description and asks her to post it online. Felix is so determined to find the wishing machine to get his “real” mother back that he runs away from school to follow a lead. Lucy locates him and takes him to meet someone named Arcade Dave, who promises to let them know if he locates the machine. Lucy and Felix form a close bond as he helps her navigate home life with her new baby, Amy, and learn to be a mother.

Lucy falls in love with Sam all over again throughout the novel, starting with a date night where Sam recalls stories of when they first met. As they grow closer, Sam shares more of himself with her. Lucy discovers that Sam changed the entire course of his music career after the loss of Chloe. He had written a song about the then-unborn Chloe that became a flop on the market. In the wake of Chloe’s loss, Sam could not bear the negative reviews and pivoted to scoring music for movies instead. Even as Lucy learns more about her husband, however, the lack of shared memories creates tension between them.

Lucy’s production company, Badger TV, faces a major challenge with a pitch-off that will determine the future of the company. Everyone’s jobs are on the line, and Lucy feels immense pressure to come up with a winning idea to defeat competitor Coleson’s team. Felix ultimately helps her to discover an idea by translating a game she played with him and baby Amy into a show called The House Is Going to Get You. By collaborating closely with her team, Amy’s company wins the pitch-off against Coleson’s show proposal, which features children acting as their parents’ therapists.

As Lucy settles into the future timeline, her memories start to come back to her. She remembers details like the place on the sidewalk where Felix fell and her honeymoon with Sam. When Arcade Dave tells Lucy where to find the newsagent’s with the wishing machine, she discovers that she has been looking in the wrong place for it. She wishes to go back, but the machine does not turn on and grant her wish. The old woman tells her she is too attached to her future life. She needs to say her goodbyes if she is serious about returning.

At home, she tells Felix about finding the machine, and he says she’s already his mother and does not have to change anything. Sam and Felix create a special dinner for Lucy to celebrate her, and they tell her they love her, even if she cannot remember the past 16 years. 

The next day, memories continue to flood back, and Lucy panics that she will not make it to the wishing machine before they fully return, trapping her in the future permanently. She rushes back and makes her wish, and this time it is successful. Back in her original timeline, Lucy does not remember what happens in the future, but she wakes up with clarity about how to improve her current life by establishing some rules with her roommates, making up with Zoya, and changing her attitude. Five years later, Lucy and her friends, Faye, Zoya, and Roisin, go out to sing karaoke, which is when and how Lucy meets Sam.