Love and Other Paradoxes by Catriona Silvey Published by William Morrow Paperbacks on March 11, 2025
Genres: Romance, Time Travel
Source: Paperback from publisher
One of the greatest love stories in history gets derailed when a struggling poet at Cambridge runs into a time-traveler who agrees to help him find his muse—a thoughtful and uplifting romantic comedy for fans of About Time and The Midnight Library.
Cambridge University, 2005: Student Joe Greene scribbles verses in the margins of his notebook, dreaming of a future where his words will echo through the ages, all while doubting it could ever happen.
Then, the future quite literally finds him—in the form of Esi. She’s part of a time-traveling tour, a trip for people in the future to witness history’s greatest moments firsthand. The star of this tour? Joe Greene. In Esi’s era, Joe is as renowned as Shakespeare. And he’s about to meet Diana, a fellow student and aspiring actress, who will become his muse and the subject of his famous love poems.
But Esi is harboring a secret. She’s not here because she idolizes Joe—actually, she thinks his poetry is overrated. Something will happen at Cambridge this year that will wreck Esi’s life, and she’s hell-bent on changing it. When Esi goes rogue from her tour, she bumps into Joe and sends his destiny into a tailspin. To save both their futures, Esi becomes Joe’s dating coach, helping him win over Diana. But when Joe’s romantic endeavors go off-script—and worse, he starts falling for Esi instead—they both face a crucial question: Is the future set in stone, or can we pen our own fates?
Love and Other Paradoxes is a time traveling romance that will leave you pondering big questions long after you turn the final page. This book was so interesting and made me feel all the feels. Our main characters, Joe and Esi drew me right in and I was so interested to see how their story was going to turn out.
Joe is a college student just trying to get by. Little does he know that he is a famous writer and poet in the making. Esi is from the future, and she knows how famous Joe will be. But she travels back in time to try and alter the timeline to try and save her mom/family. In doing so, their paths cross and Esi tries to help guide Joe along towards his future.
Time Traveling novels are always so fascinating for me to try and mentally puzzle out. Each action can have such big consequences, and if I think too long and hard about it, I normally end up with more questions than answers, but trying to puzzle it all out and what the butterfly affect of certain actions might be is part of the fun. I did enjoy that about Love and Other Paradoxes.
Overall, this was an interesting read. I did find it a bit slow in parts and it took me longer to get through than I would have liked, but overall I did enjoy this one. If you are a fan of Time travel stories and you are looking for a unique concept, I think this would be an excellent book to check out.
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