This was a good book. There were definitely some great aspects of this books but overall the feeling was the author bit off a bit more than he could chew plot wise.
I liked the characters in this book. They were interesting and fun to follow on this journey even if their personalities seemed to ping pong back and forth. Blake and Michael especially seemed very back and forth. Both of them their personalities would change on a dime to fit whatever Jackson needed for that particular scene. Andre seemed to to be the only character with a stable personality.
Also the plot of this was just all over the place. The explanations all seemed so odd and out of left field in some cases and completely contradictory in others. I reached thr end of the book and still had no idea of how exactly the time travel worked or what any real consequences were. It just felt like Jackson had no idea what we was doing when it came to that aspect was.
This was a solid idea for a book and a decent execution but in some places it just fell short.

This book is so close to being perfect. Dialogue between the rich and the middle class, between queer poc and queer white ppl, little facts about queer history, an amazing main character, and a really cool sci-fi time traveling plot.

Andre is a really interesting main character. Recovering from cancer and dealing with a liver transplant and the newfound powers that come with it, all while balancing school to try and graduate on time is not an easy task and he handles it.

The romance just didn’t work for me. The main plot is that Andre is working out time travel, and he has a hot love interest in 1969 as well as a hot love interest in 2021. There are kind of no distinguishing characteristics to these romantic partners, they’re both very generic fill-in hot boyfriends. Andre, the main character, is pretty much the only fully fleshed out character in the book other than his 2021 boyfriend’s mother.

Not to mention the fact that his modern day love interest is the brother of the guy who gave Andre his liver. They do address it, but in weird ways that makes the slightly incestuous vibe even more prominent.

Overall, I would recommend this if you enjoy sci-fi novels and time traveling, I would not recommend this if you are only looking for romance.

Ugh. This book easily could've been phenomenal. It was set up with super cool ideas and conversations about race and queerness that with a little more development could've made this book exceptional. As it is now, it's an okay book, I still really enjoyed it and would recommend it.

The concept for this book is super creative - a time traveling donor transplantee trying to decide between two boys he likes.
I loved the writing style of this author! This book captivated me from page one and kept my interest until the end.

Yesterday Is History had a little but of everything! It was such a well written and well thought out novel and I enjoyed every minute of it. The narration was done so well I could easily see myself listening to it again. I LOVE books with time travel and the premise of this one was really unique from any that I've read before. I really fell in love with Andre and both of his love interests. I've never wanted to root for all parties in a love triangle before but I did with this one! The relationships, life lessons and self discovery were just beautiful. The elements of found family was fantastic and I just took so much away from this book. Highly recommend this one!

I really enjoyed the concept of this time travel, love triangle story! It was very creative and had some really sweet moments. It had some great themes relevant to its YA audience.

Overall, it felt a bit rushed. Andre and Michael's relationship felt like instalove, where they were only together maybe a few days but treated their relationship like an epic love story. The other side of the love triangle, Blake, was a bit volatile and hard to pin down. I didn't quite understand where the attraction came from on either end. The themes were floating around in there too, but there were maybe too many for any of them to really land.

While this book was too scattered for me, Kosoko Jackson shows a lot of potential! I look forward to reading his next work!

I loved this story! I read it a while ago when it first came out, and listening to the audiobook was a super fun experience! The narrator really brought to life some parts from the book that added so much depth to y original perception of those scenes. Would definitely recommend this audiobook to friends, and will be recommending the book on my Tik Tok!

3.5 rounded down*

Thank you to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for an audio ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed this book I just thought it could be so much more. The book felt too short and though it kept me interested all throughout it, the story definitely could've been more fleshed out. The relationships are enjoyable but I wasn't too invested in either of them. It was a bit disappointing how Andre never travels anywhere other then to see his one of his love interests. Now on the positive side, our main character is black and gay. We get to see how that plays into everything which is always nice to see. Overall it was pretty cute just not my favorite.

Note: I received an ARC of this book via netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review of this audio book.

I am torn about this novel. I found a note from the author on goodreads in the reviews:

"YESTERDAY IS HISTORY was written because I wanted to write a book where a black boy is seen as a love interest. I wanted to explore things not often seen by black and queer authors - love triangles, adventures, coming of age stories that don't feature black pain. This is a story, about a boy who goes on a fantastic adventure, and finds himself along the way. He happens to be black, happens to be gay, and happen to have...an extra ability."

Judging the novel based on these goals the author has definitely succeeded. And the book is well worth reading or listening to. The audio book version has excellent narration and I enjoyed it immensely. It is indeed wonderful to see a black MC in an 'ordinary' novel, a story not focused on his blackness, but themes of love, adventure and coming-of-age. The audio book narration adds to Andre's authenticity here despite the added adventure of time travel.

What I struggle with is the length of this novel. I feel that an epic love that reaches across time can't really be adequately dealt with in such a short time. And in addition, I couldn't help but feel that Andre's relationship with Blake was nothing but a consolation price. I think additional pages could have delved deeper into these love stories and made them more plausible. Potentially, the book will work better for younger readers than I had originally assumed based on its description.

I can recommend this book both for the pleasure of listening to this wonderful adventure story and as a much needed representative of Black MCs, and I will definitely read whatever Kosoko Jackson writes next.

The Short Version: A tremendous premise (a love triangle through time) fails to live up to its potential by barely skimming the surface of anything substantial.

The Long Version: A YA love triangle through time!? Sign me up! That’s what I thought when I requested this ARC audiobook. Unfortunately, it fell way short of my expectations for a variety of reasons. The story is about an Black teenager in Boston who gets a liver transplant from a rich white kid and as a result acquires the ability to time travel. He goes back to the late 60s and falls in love with a teenage boy from that period. Ok, so right there we have so many interesting angles/topics that could be explored: The morality of changing the past (say to intervene in the AIDS epidemic), the weird moral gray area of falling in love with someone who is a teenager when you meet them but is also technically a 70 year old in your time, the racial history of Boston, the whole white savior complex, the moral implications of being able to transfer gifts like time travel through organ transplants (especially considering the potential future of genetic engineering of humans). Sadly, none of this is explored. Some of it is referenced in an off hand way (the narrator mentions stonewall, and how Boston isn’t a great place for a black person especially in the 60s) but nothing is delved into. The story is kept so surface level that I couldn’t find a way to care beyond light curiosity.

There were a lot of problems with how this book was executed which cause it to fall so short of what I thought it might be.

First, the POV is off. It’s told from the first person, and for good reason, I think that POV makes sense in a story like this. The problem is the author seems to want to tell the story from the third person and is trying to mesh the two perspectives together. The main character is presented as an exceptionally bright young man, but he is WAY too perceptive and is never wrong in his assessments of what people are feeling or thinking. He talks like he’s inside their heads and it creates a tension in the narration that’s unnecessary. The story also didn’t feel told from his perspective, there was clearly someone else telling the story THROUGH the MC. For example, the MC is supposedly 16/17 but when he refers to his crush in the past he at one point says he’s “hot in a River Phoenix sort of way”. I could be wrong but I don’t believe too many 16 year olds in 2021 would use River Phoenix as their hot guy reference.

Second, the story is both too short and too dense. The audiobook was 7 hours so I’d guess that’s about 200-250 pages. That wasn’t enough space to develop the stories of the characters. It feels rushed. The love stories are essentially: Meet cute, now we’re in love, trouble in paradise. I didn’t get to know either of the love interests enough to root for one of them because the relationships were essentially I like this hot guy. Also the two love interests feel like the same person more or less. Everyone is played up as toned and witty so there’s not enough separation between them to explore either. Even though the book feels like it should be at least 300-350 pages, the prose contained is actually too dense for its own good. There’s plot lines (like the one where Andre has to take summer classes because he missed time for his transplant) that are completely unnecessary, and there is so much told to us that we don’t get to discover on our own. It’s constantly the main character saying “his words feel like he’s” this or that. We’re not left to interpret on our own. The existing story could probably be cut to 150-175 pages then fleshed out with more development of the love stories.

Third, there’s definitely a bit of white room syndrome here. I know where I’m supposed to be at all times, but the world was not built in an inviting way. The descriptions of places feel more like stage direction for a play than immersion of the reader.

Fourth, and to me probably most egregious, is the use of the fantasy angle. When I saw the cover I thought this was going to be a time travel adventure that also has a love triangle as the foundation, but time travel was basically an afterthought. It felt like a plot device. Time travel is a really complicated topic to use in stories and REALLY difficult to do well, but it felt like time travel was just window dressing to pull everyone in and then used as a deus ex machina to resolve the story at the end.

Lastly, the resolution of the love triangle made me loathe the main character. I don’t want to give too much away so I’ll just say neither of the love interests wants to be a second prize for Andre and the author wrote it so he told both of them they were the first choice not a consolation prize. It felt so cheap. The whole point of a love triangle is to dig at that quintessential human dilemma, the guilt, the lust, the battle between the selfish parts of ourselves and the kinder parts. That stuff is barely even grazed here and is really disappointing.

I could go on, but I don’t think there’s a point in beating a dead horse.

Overall a 1.5 out of 5 because it misses on so many levels. Would have been a 1 but there are some interesting components which might make it enjoyable to others.

Component Ratings
Idea/ Premise: 5 out of 5
Cover Art: 4.5 out of 5
Characters: 2.5 out of 5
Character development: 1 out of 5
Prose: 1.5 out of 5
Plot: 2 out of 5
Pacing: 1 out of 5
Ending: 2 out of 5