Someday Jennifer by Risto Pakarinen

What if the only way forward is to go back?

Peter is stuck. The promise of his youth has petered out into a comfortable but lonely adulthood: his career is flat, his friendships exist only on Facebook and his romantic life is well past its expiry date. But one night, spurred on by a viewing of Back to the Future after one too many drinks, he has an idea—that he will just go back. Back to the moment when his path stretched out ahead of him; when happiness was an everyday feeling and not something to be chased. Back to when his worst problem was which pair of acid-washed jeans to wear; to when the perfect girl sat next to him in English class. Back to 1986.

Fired up by his new mission, Peter packs up his life, turns off his cellphone and moves back into his teenage bedroom. He lets his hair grow long, stuffs himself into those same acid-washed jeans and resolutely ignores everything about the world that didn’t exist in the mid-eighties. Throwing himself into the project of restoring his small town’s old movie theatre, he hides his true objective from everyone—to get a second chance with the first (and only true) love of his life: that perfect girl beside him in English class, Jennifer.

But time travel is never without its complications, especially when everyone else around you remains in the present. When even his perfect 1986 starts to show its cracks, Peter is finally forced to answer the question, can you ever truly go back?