I really enjoyed this Sci-Fi novel based on the 2016 short story "The Apprentice".

Professor Gail Hoff goes travelling through several universes of the multiverse. Jeff Langley, her jack of all trades electronic wizard goes with her. Their escapades, both amorous and adventurous are exciting, gripping and addictive.

This is a far-out road trip story filled with dystopian and post-apocalyptic situations, first encounters, robots and androids.

A wonderful exciting read. I would recommend this to all.

Thank you to netgalley, the publisher and the author for sending me this ARC.

this was a good read, I enjoyed getting to know the characters and the story itself. I enjoyed the humor in this book and am interested in seeing where this is going.

The first thing that captured my interest when I saw this on netgalley is the title of the book. I so love time travel books and though the cover is not appealing I'm very interested with the topic and then the synopsis says rom-com. When I saw that, I was very excited and immediately requested for this. Fortunately, I was approved.

This is a dual POV kind of book. We have Gail a physics researcher(?) focused on time travel. Then we have Frank, her assistant. This is a story of how Gail and Frank persistently try to prove that time travel is possible while also falling in love(?). I usually enjoy books with this theme but unfortunately I was unable to finish this one.

I feel like the story went too fast but also nothing is happening. There are lots of pop culture references and I feel like it's too much for my taste. I also feel that Gail and Frank's relationship is so-so. The plot is all over the place and the science is not explained that much. Frank's POV is okay for me but it was really hard to tolerate Gail's.

All my comments are based only on the parts I have read. Since I was unable to finish this, I'm leaving the rating blank. I don't rate books that I haven't finished especially this one as I haven't read that much to give a valid rating. (Apparently, I can't leave the rating blank, so I'll give 1 star here on netgalley but on Goodreads, I left the rating blank..)

For fans of books with lots of pop culture references and some bits of romance, maybe they will enjoy this one. Unfortunately, this didn't worked out for me.

***Thanks for the publisher for allowing me to access this book via netgalley to give my honest review***

If you like a workplace love affair and find pop culture references enjoyable, ignore my bad rating and read on the find out if you might like this book more.

My biggest issue was the weird focus on sex. There wasn’t anything explicit at all and I normally don’t mind, but if the protagonists strip down to their underwear on their first day of working together and spend the night fantasizing about each other, that seems more like wish fulfillment than character development or chemistry. Sexual attraction is actually everything to two main characters have going for each other: their relationship might have worked for me if they were just co-workers, but it never felt like they developed a deep connection that might justify calling it love. If this took more time to develop these two, I might have started caring about what happened to them.

The author tries to do some empowering things concerning race and gender, and I highly appreciate that, it just feels flimsy and clunky. People that are sensitive about racism or sexual harassment might actually be annoyed about how some minor things are handled.

The different alternative futures that are visited had good ideas. They were not revolutionary, but you can do cool stuff with known concepts. There was the attempt to depict what everyday life would be like, or is for the protagonists, in these worlds, but this being a novella none of the ideas were fleshed out in any meaningful way. With the third alternative universe, this was suddenly a different book, and genre defying things can be cool, but I didn’t feel like this little mini story had anything to the with the bigger narrative expect loosely connecting to a theme I don’t want to spoil. Talking of spoilers, there was one - kind of cliché - plot element that I really didn’t like.

The only redeeming feature for me was that the writing style is compelling, so even not liking anything going on, at least it wasn’t a chore to read. Other readers might enjoy that this is a little like older SF, trying to be a little more progressive, and that the other worlds are really different from each other. If you really like the scientist and assistant trope, maybe you care more for the characters dynamic than I did. There is probably an audience for this book, but it also doesn't do anything really new or particularly well that makes me feel the need to rate it better.