We’ve all done it. Lain awake at 2am replaying a conversation, a decision, a single stupid moment that set your life on a different course. What if you could go back? Not to witness history or fight aliens — just to fix the thing that went wrong. To say the words you didn’t say. To walk through the door you walked past. To not buy that can of Coke from a newsagent in 1986.
That last one’s mine. I’ve spent the best part of a decade writing novels about exactly this premise — ordinary people given a miraculous chance to go back and fix their mistakes. It’s the question I keep returning to because the answer is never as simple as it sounds. You’d think going back and changing one decision would be straightforward. It never is. The past has a habit of fighting back.
This is a list of the best books built on that premise. Some are mine, some aren’t. I’ve been upfront about which are which. What they all share is a fascination with the same question: if you could rewrite your past, would the result actually be better?
On this page:
- Fix your own life — books about rewriting your personal past
- Fix someone else’s life — atonement and rescue missions
- Erase the past entirely — what if it never happened?
- The classics — the books that defined the genre
- FAQ
Fix Your Own Life
These books send a character back to a specific moment in their own past — the decision that went wrong, the relationship that broke, the path they didn’t take — and give them a chance to do it differently. The catch, as they all discover, is that fixing one thing usually breaks something else.
The ’86 Fix — Keith A Pearson
This is mine, and it’s the book that started my career. Craig Pelling is a middle-aged nobody — loveless marriage, dead-end job, a life that can be traced back to one bad decision he made as a teenager in 1986. When he’s given the miraculous chance to travel back and relive one weekend as his sixteen-year-old self, he tries to fix the mistake that derailed everything. It’s funny, nostalgic, and steeped in 1980s suburban England. But the fix doesn’t go to plan — because the past isn’t a machine with one broken part. Pull one thread and the whole thing unravels. The story continues in Beyond Broadhall.
The Midnight Library — Matt Haig
Nora Seed finds herself in a library between life and death, where every book contains a version of her life based on a different choice. What if she’d pursued her music career? What if she’d married the other guy? What if she’d moved to Australia? Haig uses the premise to explore depression, regret, and the paralysing weight of “what if?” with warmth and compassion. It’s not strictly time travel — more of a multiverse of roads not taken — but it asks exactly the same question: would your life be better if you’d chosen differently? The answer, as Nora discovers, is complicated.
Replay — Ken Grimwood
Jeff Winston dies of a heart attack in 1988 and wakes up in 1963 as his eighteen-year-old self, with full knowledge of the future. He lives his life again — makes different choices, gets rich, finds different love — and then dies again. And wakes up again. And again. Each replay, the window shrinks. Each time, he has to decide what actually matters. Grimwood wrote this in 1986 and it remains the gold standard of “fix your mistakes” time travel. It won the World Fantasy Award and it’ll break your heart.
Life After Life — Kate Atkinson
Ursula Todd is born in 1910, dies, and is born again. And again. Each life plays out differently based on small changes — a hand reached out, a step not taken, a word spoken at the right moment. Atkinson uses the structure to explore the entire first half of the twentieth century, but the emotional engine is always the same: can Ursula get it right this time? It’s literary, ambitious, and occasionally devastating. The “fixing mistakes” element is woven into the fabric of the novel rather than presented as a single dramatic choice.
Tuned Out — Keith A Pearson
Also mine. Toby Grant is a disgruntled millennial who’s convinced his parents’ generation had it easier. Then he’s given the chance to find out, courtesy of a trip back to 1969. Stripped of his phone, the internet, and every digital comfort, Toby has to navigate pre-decimal Britain on its own terms. It’s not a straightforward “fix your mistakes” story — it’s more about discovering whether the life you’re complaining about is actually the one you’d choose if you had the option. The ending blindsides almost every reader. It’s a standalone novel.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August — Claire North
Harry August dies and is reborn into the same life, over and over, retaining all his memories. Each life is a chance to do things differently — and each time, he learns something new about the nature of his existence. It’s cerebral, ambitious, and structured like a thriller. The “fixing mistakes” element is layered — Harry isn’t just fixing his own life; he’s part of a community of people like him, trying to prevent the end of the world across multiple lifetimes. If you want the premise taken to its most intellectually rigorous extreme, this is the book.
Fix Someone Else’s Life
These are the darker cousins. The character doesn’t go back to fix their own life — they go back to fix the damage they caused in someone else’s. The stakes are different because the guilt is the engine. You’re not trying to make your life better. You’re trying to undo something you did to another person.
A Page in Your Diary — Keith A Pearson
Mine, and the darkest of my time travel novels. Sean Hardy is a man in his fifties who discovers what became of the girlfriend he callously dumped in the 1980s — and the answer is devastating. He’s given the chance to travel back to 1988, days before a catastrophic event destroyed her life, to befriend his former girlfriend and steer her away from tragedy. The catch: he’s now old enough to be her father, she has no idea who he really is, and keeping his identity secret while saving her life turns out to be far harder than he imagined. It’s a story about guilt, atonement, and whether you can ever truly make up for the damage you’ve caused.
11.22.63 — Stephen King
Jake Epping travels back to 1958 with one mission: prevent the assassination of President Kennedy. It’s the ultimate “fix someone else’s mistake” story — except the mistake belongs to Lee Harvey Oswald, and the fix involves living in the past for five years, falling in love, and slowly discovering that the past doesn’t want to be changed. King’s period detail is extraordinary, the love story is quietly devastating, and the final act asks whether saving one life justifies destroying others. If you’ve never read it, it might be the best thing King has ever written — and yes, I’m aware of how many books the man has published.
The Summer of Impossible Things — Rowan Coleman
Luna travels from the present day to 1977 Brooklyn, where she meets a younger version of her recently deceased mother. What she discovers about her mother’s past — and the trauma that shaped her — forces Luna to decide whether she can change history to spare someone she loves from something terrible. It’s lyrical, emotionally charged, and handles its difficult subject matter with sensitivity. The “fixing” here isn’t about convenience or regret — it’s about love and protection.
Erase the Past Entirely
What if you didn’t fix the mistake — you just prevented it from ever happening? These books take the premise one step further. Instead of changing a decision, the character tries to erase an entire relationship, event, or period of their life. The results, predictably, are not what they expect.
In Lieu of You — Keith A Pearson
Mine. Gary Kirk is facing a bitter divorce and the prospect of financial ruin. A mysterious woman offers him a solution: travel back to 1996 and prevent his teenage self from ever meeting his future wife. If they never meet, they never marry, and there’s no divorce. Simple. Except erasing a twenty-five-year relationship has consequences Gary never imagined. It’s a time travel novel that’s really about the value of the relationships we take for granted — and the uncomfortable question of whether the life you didn’t live would actually be the one you wanted.
Making History — Stephen Fry
A Cambridge student and a physicist conspire to prevent Hitler from being born. They succeed — and the world that results is somehow worse. Fry uses the premise to explore the law of unintended consequences on the grandest possible scale. It’s clever, funny in places, and deeply unsettling in others. The “erasure” here isn’t personal — it’s historical — but the lesson is the same one Gary Kirk learns in In Lieu of You: removing something from history doesn’t create a void. Something else fills it, and you might not like what that something is.
All Our Wrong Todays — Elan Mastai
Tom Barren lives in 2016 — but a gleaming, utopian 2016 where technology solved everything. After a time travel accident, he ends up in our version of 2016. The grubby, disappointing, non-jetpack one. He has the option to fix the timeline and go home, but there’s a problem: he’s falling in love with someone who only exists in the broken version of reality. Mastai turns the “fix the mistake” premise inside out — the mistake here might be fixing things at all.
The Classics
These are the books that defined or popularised the “go back and fix it” premise. If you’re working through the genre, these are the foundations.
A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens
The original. Scrooge doesn’t physically travel through time, but the premise is identical: he’s shown his past mistakes, his present consequences, and his future ruin — and given the chance to change before it’s too late. Every “fix your mistakes” story written since 1843 owes something to this. It’s also remarkably short and well worth rereading as an adult, when you understand exactly how Scrooge ended up the way he did.
The Time Traveler’s Wife — Audrey Niffenegger
Henry has a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel involuntarily. He can’t control when or where he goes, but he keeps being pulled to the pivotal moments of his relationship with Clare. It’s not a “fix your mistakes” novel in the traditional sense — Henry can’t change anything — but it’s the definitive exploration of what it means to know what’s coming and be powerless to stop it. The love story is extraordinary, and the ending is one of the most emotionally devastating in modern fiction.
Kindred — Octavia Butler
Dana, a Black woman in 1970s California, is repeatedly pulled back to the antebellum South to save the life of a white slaveholder — her ancestor. It’s not a choice. She can’t fix the past; she can barely survive it. Butler uses time travel not as a wish-fulfilment device but as a confrontation — forcing the reader (and Dana) to reckon with history as it actually was, not as we’d like it to have been. It’s harrowing, brilliant, and the necessary counterpoint to every comfortable “wouldn’t it be nice to go back?” fantasy on this list.
FAQ
What are the best books about going back in time to fix mistakes?
For British, nostalgic, and character-driven stories: The ’86 Fix, A Page in Your Diary, and In Lieu of You by Keith A Pearson. For literary heavyweights: Replay by Ken Grimwood, Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, and 11.22.63 by Stephen King. For something more philosophical: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.
What’s the difference between “fix your own life” and “fix someone else’s life” time travel books?
In “fix your own life” books (like The ’86 Fix and Replay), the character goes back to change a decision that damaged their own future. In “fix someone else’s” books (like A Page in Your Diary and 11.22.63), the character goes back to undo harm they caused — or prevent harm happening — to another person. The emotional stakes are different: the first is about regret, the second about guilt and atonement.
Can you recommend a time travel book that isn’t sci-fi?
Most of the books on this list aren’t hard sci-fi. The ’86 Fix, A Page in Your Diary, and In Lieu of You are character-driven stories where the time travel is a plot device, not the focus. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is literary fiction with a speculative premise. If you want zero sci-fi elements, A Christmas Carol is the original “shown your mistakes and given a chance to change” story.
What if I want something funny rather than heavy?
The ’86 Fix is the funniest on this list — it balances 1980s nostalgia and comedy with the emotional weight of looking back on your life. Tuned Out is also very funny, at least until the ending hits you. Making History by Stephen Fry has his characteristic wit. For something lighter, All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai is clever and entertaining.
Are there books about erasing a relationship rather than fixing a mistake?
Yes — In Lieu of You by Keith A Pearson is specifically about a man who travels back in time to prevent himself from ever meeting his wife, in order to avoid a bitter divorce. Making History by Stephen Fry takes the concept further, erasing a historical figure entirely. Both explore the unintended consequences of removing something from the timeline rather than changing it.
I’ve read The ’86 Fix — what should I read next?
A Page in Your Diary if you want something darker and more emotionally intense. In Lieu of You if you want the “what if?” question applied to a marriage. Tuned Out if you want a millennial’s perspective on the past. For other authors: Replay by Ken Grimwood is the classic of the genre, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig explores similar themes without time travel, and 11.22.63 by Stephen King is the heavyweight.