Kate Hope Day’s debut novel ‘If, Then’ might have worked better as a screenplay

Dr. Ginny McDonnell is a surgeon who, after 15 years of marriage, dreams her affair with her scrub nurse and co-worker Edith could be more permanent.

Ginny’s husband Mark McDonnell is a behavioral ecologist who, based on research studying animal behavior, thinks Broken Mountain, the volcano he lives on, is no longer dormant. His dreams — or rather, nightmares — contain his family of three (Ginny, himself and their pre-teen son, Noah) being in danger.

Cass is Mark and Ginny’s neighbor — the one with the large black dog and baby. She gave up her PhD in metaphysics to be the wife of Amar and mom to Leah. She could go back to school. Her philosophy professor and graduate advisor, Robert Kells, really wants her to come back and help him expand on his research on hypothetical parallel universes.

Samara, another one of Ginny, Mark and Cass’s neighbors, has moved back to her childhood home after her mother died following a procedure Dr. McDonnell personally oversaw. Her mom’s still alive in her hallucinations.

Together, these neighbors make up the threads of Kate Hope Day’s debut novel, “If, Then,” a confusing, forgettable and unsatisfying book that might have worked better in a parallel universe in another form.

“If, Then”
By Kate Hope Day
260 pp. Random House. $26.
2019.

As much as “If, Then” centers around Ginny, Mark, Cass and Samara, the reader never really gets to know them beyond the archetypes (doctor mom, scientist dad, neighbor, neighbor) they’re supposed to represent. You don’t come to care for them. You hardly remember them. It’s as if the characters themselves are placeholders — forgettable and undeveloped in favor of a plot where nothing really happens except characters seeing another version of themselves in their present timeline. (If “If, Then” were a movie, the viewer wouldn’t remember the characters names. When summarizing the plot, they’d probably refer to them by the much more famous actor portraying them.)

If “If, Then” were a movie, it wouldn’t be the main draw. It’d be released in the summer, paired with a summer blockbuster (maybe a superhero movie or a romantic comedy) at the drive-in. It’d be a filler, a bonus second or third act that you’re only staying to watch because it’s free with the price of admission and you can’t say no to free stuff.

If “If, Then” were a movie, it wouldn’t win any awards (except maybe a Razzie). It might be what you watch if there’s nothing on television or if you’re too stoned to care. It might be so bad that it’s good.

If “If, Then” shed some characters and focused on developing one (like in the animated film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” or Blake Crouch’s novel “Dark Matter”), then it might have been better.

But we don’t live in a world of “if, then.” As it is in this universe, the fate of “If, Then” is as doomed as lifeforms living near an active volcano.

Disclaimer: I received a free eARC of “If, Then” from NetGalley and Random House in exchange for this honest review.