This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub – #Audiobook Review – #timetravel

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

Best Books of 2022 So Far

Book Blurb:

With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn’t just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it’s her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?

My Review:

Okay, I’m definitely not the right demographic for this book. Besides being a much older generation, I couldn’t identify with the intensity of the retrospection with her father, not having one myself that I noticed his passing. And, sorry, I’m not a monster city fan.

As it’s been out now for several months and it’s been a fav, accruing a lot of notice and positive reviews, everyone knows it’s about a time-traveling woman who leaves a forty-year-old body having over-partied into oblivion to discover herself again at sixteen. UGH! Those teen years—no thank you. However, I am a fan of the time traveler genre. In this case, back and forth to the same time, 1996, and the relationship with her single-parent father.

Having said the above, you’ll possibly understand why I thought the first part of the book was relatively slow and difficult for me to engage as it set up the characters, the current atmosphere, and the stressful situation with her dying father.

I enjoyed her first travel experience and again when she figured out how to move freely between the times. I found the pace, and my interest, accelerated somewhat in the middle of the book when she began to explore the question of whether or not there was any way to change any outcomes. More importantly, would she?

Lots of retrospective discussions, reliving the grand old 1990s, heavy nostalgic memories. Gees, it’s almost depressing, interesting heavy-handed author writing style prose but the conclusion came well-plotted and satisfying.

So many time travel novels end in the trope of “do-overs.” I also wrote about that back in 2015. The fork in the road. What if…I’d gone left instead of right. Isn’t this something all of us have mused over? The novel charges the reader to look at what we have now—enjoy it or make the changes–particularly for those whom we love.

I received a complimentary review copy of this audiobook from the publisher and NetGalley. These are my honest thoughts.

Book Details:

Genre: Time Travel Science Fiction, Time Travel Fiction, Family Life Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Audio
ASIN: B09HST51ZG
Listening Length: 8 hrs 31 mins
Narrator: Marin Ireland
Publication Date: May 17, 2022
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Links: This Time Tomorrow [Amazon]
Barnes & Noble
Kobo

Rosepoint Publishing: Three point Five Stars

The Author: Emma Straub is the New York Times-bestselling author of five novels—This Time Tomorrow, All Adults Here, The Vacationers, Modern Lovers, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures—and the short story collection Other People We Married. Her books have been published in more than 20 languages, and All Adults Here is currently in development as a television series. She and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, New York.

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The Memory Stones: Forgiveness is a Journey in Time by Lewis Pennington – #BookReview – #timetravelfiction

Rosepoint Publishing: Five Stars

Book Blurb:

When Mase Winslow, the heir to a Civil War-era plantation is forced to almost kill his best friend, a slave named Spoon, he unconsciously brings about the demise of his beloved home. As guilt and remorse overtake him, he seeks atonement through death on the battlefield. With the help of an ordinary-looking stone given to him by Spoon’s mother, he is transported through time. When he realizes he can redeem himself by altering his actions, he suddenly has hope. The reality-bending journey that ensues takes him to present-day New York City and then back to Civil War-era South Carolina, requiring him to navigate a myriad of desperate challenges. With more than a century of guilt weighing him down, he battles himself, Yankee troops, nature’s elements, and a nemesis that follows him through time. Set against an ominous ticking clock counting toward a deadly showdown that could cost him the love of his life, all odds are stacked against him.

His Review:

The U.S. Civil War was the most brutal event in U.S. history. Sometimes brother fought brother on either side of the conflict. Lewis Pennington has taken this conflict into a dramatic story of love and survival. The Winslow plantation, better known as Willow Creek Plantation, is unique in the treatment of its’ slaves where they are treated more as family and friends.

Mase Winslow’s father, Braxton Winslow, is struck with a debilitating degenerative paralysis that leaves him unable to carry on management of the plantation. This occurs at the time the civil war is beginning. Mase has joined but does not want to leave because of his fathers’ failing health. His best friend is nicknamed Spoon. Often times, Spoon is heard entertaining groups with his ability to play tunes with two silver spoons. He is beloved by all who know him.

Mase’s sister Annabelle was raped just prior to his reporting for duty with the Confederate army and the prime suspect is Spoon. The penalty was to be death, but Mase does not have the heart to kill his best friend and whips Spoon to within an inch of his life. But he can’t handle the guilt.

Trauma amnesia is the result and Paul cannot recall the incident.

Paul Talbert has a passion for writing and works for a large New York newspaper. However, the editor of the newspaper relentlessly pushes him on deadlines. His co-worker, Zoey Antonelli, struggles to keep him on task and away from the bottle that helps to allay his lack of memory of his childhood. His early life is a ghostly memory and he does not understand why, so he goes back to Beaufort County, South Carolina to try and recover some of his memories. The memory of a beautiful old antebellum colonial mansion is actually a broken-down shopping mall. Could his recollection be so far from accurate?

Memory stones are a portal to different dimensions and times. The user need only squeeze the stone and is transported to another place and time. Memories and identities are not taken intact from one time to the other though.

This tale is wonderful adventure into the musings we all have; “if we could turn back time?” The characters are engaging, endearing, and feel real. I suggest anyone who has daydreamed about going into the past or future enjoy this ride authored by Lewis Pennington. 5 stars – CE Williams

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the author and these are my unbiased opinions.

Book Details:

Genre: Time Travel Fiction, Time Travel Science Fiction, Suspense
Publisher: Silver Lining Publishing
ASIN: B08W3Q2M87
Print Length: 391 pages
Publication Date: February 22, 2021
Source: Author request
Title Link: The Memory Stones [Amazon]
Barnes and Noble
Kobo

The Author: Lewis Pennington graduated from East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina with a degree in Graphic Design and Marketing. Upon graduation, he moved to New York City where he began his career with the now-defunct Science Fiction Magazine Omni Magazine. After decades of navigating through the corporate marketing maze, he is now focusing on his next chapter in life–providing readers with inspirational fiction. Lewis and his family live in Asheville, North Carolina.