Universe Overbooked My Life

Benjie Cruz has a system for everything. Fourteen color-coded categories in his Google Calendar. A wireless mic named Celia. A van he drives to the deep provinces when clients want authenticity, which somehow always means his specific face, his voice, and his ability to make a room full of strangers feel like family for four hours.He is very good at this.He has also spent eleven years doing it for other people's lives while quietly neglecting his own.When a family reunion in Batangas forces him off the calendar and into ten days with the entire Cruz-Lazaro clan, three feuding titas, one unscattered grandmother, and the six-year-old son he has never met, Benjie discovers that the universe has been rescheduling an appointment he has been avoiding for years.As old arguments resurface, karaoke wars erupt, and relatives appoint him referee for problems nobody can solve, Benjie finds himself facing something far more difficult than family chaos: the possibility of becoming part of a little boy's life.The Universe Overbooked My Life is a warm, funny, and deeply heartfelt novel about fathers and sons, second chances, and the difference between showing up professionally and showing up as a person. It is about the child who watches where you are, even when you don't notice. About the woman who asks what makes you laugh when nobody is watching and actually waits for the answer. About the family that is loud because it means things.And it is about what happens when your calendar finally, comprehensively betrays you into the life you were supposed to be living.