A Different Time By Michael K. Hill Book Review | Blog Tour

Hey everyone!!

Welcome to today’s post which is a review for ‘A Different Time’ by Michael K. Hill and I am excited to share my thoughts with you all.

Thank you so much to the author and @thewritereads for sending me this book in exchange for my thoughts. This will not influence my opinion and all thoughts are my own. Thank you for including me in this tour!! 

Genre: Sci-Fi Contemporary Romance

Published: July 2nd 2019 by Tangent Press

Synopsis: Keith Nolan falls in love with a remarkable young woman from the past, talking to him on a home video she recorded in 1989. To keep their conversation going, he must find more of her tapes—while forces work against them both, and time is running out

Content Warnings:

Sexual Assault, Grief, Suicide, Cancer

My Review

This book follows Keith who is a young man who finds tapes of a home video from 1989, 30 years into the past but he is somehow able to talk to Lindsey through the recording. You get to experience their lives and relationships throughout this story but Keith needs to keep finding these tapes in order to keep the conversations going and that might just be harder than it seems.

This is a unique coming of age story which captures many of the feelings of growing up. It is quite a raw book that touches on my different emotions and hardships which I thought were written really well. In this book we follow two main characters Keith and Lindsey who are interesting and likeable characters.

Keith Nolan: I thought he was a great male protagonist for this book as he was open to love and not afraid of his emotions which is quite refreshing. He also loved comics which I thought was great to see some X-Men appreciation in books. I thought he had nice traits in a male main character and he also had a good male friendship where they wanted to be there for each other. Although we didn’t get to see too much of the friendship what we did see was really nice.

Lindsey: She was the other main character who was in the past which brought some nice nostalgia with the music she liked and the setting. She was a strong female character who was a dreamer and wanted more from life. I thought she was a inspiring and passionate character to read about. I liked seeing her deal with the debate between taking a creative career and a ‘sensible’ job and I just loved seeing her talk about this.

“… a job and stability– which sounds good. But I’m certain if I take it, the trap will snap shut, and that’s where I will stay until I die. There are all these magnificent things bouncing around in my head, but they’ll never see the light if I follow this path.”

It is a story set in two different time periods; Lindsey was in the 80’s whilst Keith was in present day. Even though the characters were in different times it was still able to emphasise the importance and power of connection between two people and how it can affect your life, I thought it was able to do this even better than stories where the characters are together.

The writing was effortless and easy to sink into. I think that it flowed together brilliantly. Although it was a relatively short book it was still able to deliver plenty of emotion in a heart-warming story about life and connection emphasising the importance of living life. The time difference aspect was able to highlight how life can be capable of holding so much if you are able to pursue your goals and be open to life giving this book an optimistic note whilst still reaching really emotional levels.

“Love cannot exist without loneliness. To cherish joy, we must endure pain”

The book had a few problems but not large ones, just little things for me. For example it was quite insta-lovey, the characters felt connected almost immediately but saying that it didn’t feel unrealistic. The plot had areas of being predictable but again I don’t necessary think this is bad as a story doesn’t need to twists to be interesting and the story was captivating enough. My main issue was how this one thing consumed everything in the main character so he kind of only had one thought which isn’t my favourite but it was delivered well and meant the emotions were able to hit harder in a way but I would have preferred a bit more range from the characters motivations.

Overall, I enjoyed this story. The characters were interesting and the plot was really unique with the time difference element. I love the overall message it had and the emotional levels it reached. The writing was effortless which made reading it all the more enjoyable. As I have mentioned there were a few minor issues for me personally, in particular the one mind-set but I would still recommend it to people if the synopsis interests you.

⭐⭐⭐.5

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Beginning as a sketch comedy writer for American television, Michael K. Hill progressed to become an internationally published writer of fiction and non-fiction. His short story anthology, Anansi and Beyond, published in 2017, and his debut novel, A Different Time, is available now. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, kids, and 7 rescued animals.

Website: http://michaelkhill.com/

Buy the Book here

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Have you read ‘A Different Time’? If so, what did you think? Is it on your TBR?

Have you read any books which features different time periods?