Heather Blair

When Diego Delgado closed his eyes it was 2020. When he awoke, he was one-hundred years in the past.Thrust into the dawn of the Jazz Age with no money and nowhere to go, Diego encounters a veritable bouquet of acquaintances including a kind-hearted factory owner, a free-spirited flapper, a worldly-wise mystic, and a strong-willed heir named Thomas Greely.Diego, desperate to return to the future and reunite with his young daughter, must blend in with the roaring twenties lifestyle while searching for answers.But distractions are all around him, especially Thomas who is both beautiful and charismatic, and Diego must grapple with the reality that even if he succeeds in returning home, half of his heart will stay behind.

For the Lost Time

Kayla Smith

I received a free copy of this book Booktamins as I was chosen to be part of their promotional blog tour. Thank you! However, all my opinions are my own. 

This book was such a nice surprise and definitely not what I expected! I have to be honest, I was stressed out when I was chosen for this book tour because I forgot I signed up and I had a million things to do this week so I wasn’t sure I’d get the book done in time. Luckily, this was so easy to fly through and at certain points, I was reading it at work, under a clipboard pretending I was looking at something else just so I could see what happened next.

I thoroughly enjoyed the relationship between Diego and Thomas. I haven’t read any time travel romances but there were many moments Diego would say something that Thomas wouldn’t understand because it was a phrase that hadn’t been invented yet. I think those moments were a lot of fun, they grounded us back into the time period of the 1920s and reminded us of Diego’s ultimate goal, to get back to 2020 so he can see his daughter. I appreciated that was an underlying issue for one of our characters as it gave us a reason he was constantly brooding and wouldn’t allow himself to get too close to Thomas. The stakes were high and the tension was as well, so when we ultimately get the payoff it’s so much better. All of the scenes between the two are fade to black, so if you want something that’s not too smutty, I’d definitely recommend this one.

Unfortunately, there were a few aspects I didn’t enjoy while I was reading which ultimately brought it down to 3.5 stars. I didn’t think Henry’s POV was necessary at all. He’s essentially the person who raised Thomas since his parents were always traveling. I appreciated that it was there and I understand the author chose to write about the horrors people back in this time had to go through if they were gay to once again, raise the stakes of the relationship between Thomas and Diego as they’re two men in a relationship in the 1920’s. I just thought his nightmares were unnecessary and it was torturous to get through them as they detailed Henry’s childhood experiences waiting to be castrated because he was attracted to men. I’m not triggered by much, but this was definitely close to being something I couldn’t read. I think we could have learned about this experience through Thomas’s eyes as Henry told him about what happened to him and we still would have felt the same sense of dread about what could be done to Thomas and Diego if they were ever caught together. I also didn’t really understand the explanation of the time travel, but I still thought it was a lot of funny anyway so that wasn’t too huge of a hangup for me.

Overall, this book was a lot of fun. I enjoyed our side characters and our occasional look into what’s going on in 2020 as Diego is still stuck in 1920. I think it grounded the reader and showed us why we want Diego to get back to the right time period, even though he was slowly growing happier with Thomas. There was notable chemistry between the characters and I really felt myself put into each scene with the authors descriptive writing. If this book had just been edited a little bit more, I think it could have been pushed up to at least a 4 star read. However, if this premise sounds interesting to you at all I’d recommend you give it a try! I do know there’s a stigma against indie published authors and I was a bit hesitant going into this read because I wasn’t sure what I was getting into but this was great and so well done. Definitely give it a try if you’re looking to read more indie published stuff like I am.

For the Lost Time

Reviews