Ideal Life
Release Date: Aug 18, 2026
Perfect for fans of Rebecca Serle and Taylor Jenkins Reid
What if you could rewind the last twenty-four hours and perfect your life?
Embarrassing email typo? Corrected and perfected.
Missed workout? Rescheduled and crushed.
Awkward conversation? Smoothed out and charmed.
On the eve of Talia Morgan’s neuroscience startup’s major acquisition, a glitch in her app leads to catastrophe, and everything she’s worked for crumbles in a single night. Then Talia wakes up with a mysterious watch that lets her rewind the last twenty-four hours. Suddenly, she can prevent the glitch, ace that crucial meeting, and savor perfect Sunday afternoons with Sam, her brilliant best friend who’s quietly loved her for nearly two decades.
But what starts as a tool for good soon becomes a dangerous temptation to turn back every messy moment and optimize her life until it’s flawless. When one rewind goes too far, though, Talia begins to see that the imperfect version of her life might be the only one worth living.
From New York Times bestselling author Evelyn Skye comes a story that asks whether our relentless pursuit of an ideal life might be keeping us from truly living at all.
Handmade Bookmarks + Autographed Copies of Ideal Life
Available for pre-order now at Fireside Books in Redwood City, CA. Bead bookmarks are limited edition pre-order gifts (handmade by me!) and only available at Fireside Books until they run out.
Please email your pre-order request to:
orders@firesideRWC.com
- I will personalize the book if you like, just include the name I should write in the book (e.g., “To Andrew”)
- Fireside Books will ship to you or you can pick up from the store if you’re local!
- (note: Fireside Books is a small husband-wife run store, so they’re taking orders by email. They don’t have a website that takes orders—ordering from their Bookshop.org page will not ship an autographed copy or bookmark, since those orders go through Bookshop’s centralized distribution.)
You can also order from other stores (unsigned books, no bookmark), including:
Praise for Ideal Life
“While wary of the marriage of business and tech, Skye intentionally highlights potential benefits of the advanced technology itself, which accurately mirrors the complicated contemporary conversation surrounding AI. Perfect for those who want a hint of romance in their personal-growth stories.”
—Booklist
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“Magical and very timely, Evelyn Skye’s Ideal Life is a delight, a story that reminds readers to err is human and to love is messy and divine.”
— Meg Shaffer, USA Today Bestselling Author of The Book Witch and The Wishing Game
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“Whip-smart, timely, and touching – a thoughtful take on our obsession with self-improvement, and the role technology plays in facilitating our best and worst selves.”
— Catriona Silvey, International Bestselling author of Meet Me in Another Life
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“For anyone who has ever left a party and wished they could rewind something they said. Evelyn Skye’s Ideal Life was a reminder to look down less and look out more.”
— Thea Weiss, author of The Second Chance Cinema