Time travelling sapphic love story??? Yes please! I devoured this book. Absolutely loved it.

Thanks so much for the Arc!

Time and Tide is the all encompassing time travel story of Samantha. After an unexpected breakup with her not-out-girlfriend, Samantha hops on a plane to Barcelona with a broken heart and just enough alcohol to make her feel light again. When the plane crashes, Sam is saved at sea by a ship, only nothing makes sense. Sam wakes up in the 1800's and is now surrounded by a captain, a huge body of water and the British army. This journey was fun, lighthearted, funny, and loving. Sam is an amazing main character that is resilient and brave. I love just about everything in this book. I thought it the writing was beautiful and the juxtaposition of the 1800's vs 2024 language and etiquette was so wonderous. I really enjoyed reading this, the love story between Sam and Daisy was growing, beautiful and earnest. Sam comes upon the Goodenough family and coincidentally meets Daisy, a young women who loves to read and write, but refuses to get married. This love that grows between these two is incredibly honest and real. It was a refreshing read, something I don't usually lean towards, how ever the writing made it easy to love.

I loved this fresh new premise on an "Lost in Austin" type book! I read this one at the beach and I think it was the perfect setting for reading it! It was (mostly) light (CW for attempted rape and multiple on-paper assaults). and it was paced quickly enough to keep me engaged all the way through! I think I personally would have liked to see the (inner?) desire for Sam to return to her own time or at least some, hmm (despondency? ) at her situation? But that may just be me and it might have changed the entire tone of the book to add those elements in. In any case - I think this was a very fun time-traveling regency book!

This novel has the perfect premise - sapphic love story with time travel and regency-era England! Unfortunately, I had to DNF around the halfway mark. The book starts depressing and just becomes more-so as it progresses. Personally, I find the “miserable gays” trope a bit overdone. Sad to have to pass this one up.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC! Content warning for sexual assault and abuse (I didn't know this going in, and there are a couple of pretty intense scenes of attempted sexual assault). Spoilers ahead with my full review.

As a queer person and lover of Regency-era romance (Jane Austen my darling!), a sapphic time travel story set in 1806 could not have been more appealing to me. I devoured this book very quickly, as it's mostly plot-driven, unlike novels written during the actual Regency era. I still found the characters well-developed, quirky, and even lovable, though I do think if this book was longer, there could have been more room devoted to developing some of the important side characters. I was sad that Fenton wasn't a bigger part of the story after the first half, as I thought his character was complicated and interesting, and I think that Marigold's dislike of Sam and their conflict could have been given more space as well. Sam's trauma is touched on many times, but could have been explored in more depth; her life in 2024 is given up just a bit too easily.

There was a good bit of sexiness throughout the book, though fair warning & spoilers ahead: there is both M/F and F/F sex depicted with some detail, and our bisexual MC, Sam, does have sex with a man who turns out to be her future girlfriend's brother which is a little uncomfortable for me to think too much about, personally.

I found most of the twists, especially the ending, to be pretty predictable, though not in an entirely bad way. Yes, I expected that Sam would turn out to be The Wealthy Widow, but that didn't stop me from looking forward to how that would wind up happening. I do think that the climax was a bit abrupt (no pun intended), and it almost felt like Frey was just ready to wrap up the story and so did a bit of fast-forwarding to get to the good part at the end. But given how awful Lewis is, the eventual resolution is deeply pleasing; I'm so glad it didn't happen off-page, with Sam just so happening to inherit as he dies or something or other. And boy do I love the ending - yes, let our queer Regency darlings have a happy ending, thank you very much!

All that said, if the blurb appeals to you, I think you'll like this book, and it is definitely worth reading for any fellow queer historial fiction lovers like me!
Rep: female bisexual Canadian MC, lesbian love interest, queer female Muslim ex

I love a sweet historic love story! This was a really entertaining story from the beginning. It kept me reading and I was so in love with the characters.

A sapphic time travel book that is focused in the regency era is such a fun concept and while I enjoyed parts of it the whole thing fell a bit flat. The story follows Samantha who is in a place crash and when she comes out of it, it is the 1800s. The story had several pacing issues throughout. It definitely stands out as I have not ever read anything similar and therefore I think others should give it a try as well.

A time-traveling sapphic regency romance with plenty of surprises! Time and Tide is a light, fun read about Sam, a modern day bisexual woman with a broken heart, who travels back in time and falls in love with Daisy Goodenough, sister of the sea captain who rescues Sam when she lands back in time. This book reminded me, funnily enough, of that episode of Fantasy Island where the modern romance lover zaps through a portal and meets her favorite Victorian sapphic romance writer. Or of Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh. It doesn't go too deep on the time period adjustments or the time travel explanations, but if you're looking for a quick, sweet read that'll fill that Bridgerton-shaped hole in your heart, this could be it!

I really wanted to like this book. The premise sounded like something exactly for me—sapphic time travel to the regency era. What could be wrong about it? It ended up fun, but as a character over plot girl, I just don't think it was for me.

To give a little more detail, Time and Tide is about Samantha, our main character who has a breakup with her girlfriend in the modern day but still goes on the trip they were meant to, only for her plane to crash in the ocean, and... she's pulled out in the early 1800s. An awesome concept!

Unfortunately, for me, so much of this book fell flat. At the core of my issues was Sam as a main character—besides just fitting into a modern activist bisexual woman archetype and her past relationship, I couldn't tell you anything about her personality or life. And if those things were ever actually mentioned, it was never integrated into her to the point where I felt a desire to empathize with her or understand her. Similarly, the way she settled into the idea of existing in the 1800s felt contrary to the little I knew about her (stubborn, sharp, "pushy"), instead settling into an immediate acceptance and settle for survival mode. Maybe some of this could be attributed to the various long time skips that allowed her to settle in without actually doing any of the character work to get her there.

Sam's ex-girlfriend from the present mainly exists to be a reminder of Sam's insecurities—and to introduce her favorite author, Margaret Goodenough, randomly mentioned early on as the writer of the first published sapphic kiss in literature, who never married and lived with a "mysterious Wealthy Widow" who people theorize she was romantically involved with.

Needless to say, I'd had the entire plot nailed down in the first 10% of the book. Any twists unfortunately felt shoed in almost as if it were a soap opera, which was wild considering how predictable the overarching story was.

The romance had its moments—the love interest, Daisy Goodenough (who happens to be the sister of the captain who rescues Sam from the ocean), is more developed than Sam, but I never felt there was a good reason for her to fall in love with Sam. Lust, sure—Sam is a modern woman with a brash personality and awareness of her body and what she can do with it. But I don't know that I ever fully bought their love and devotion to each other.

The book itself as I mentioned never fully deals with Sam's trauma for 75% of the book, until it really decides to and blows it up big time—only to forget about it shortly thereafter. Despite an eleventh hour sweet twist with some minor characters, any emotional arc this book might have had really didn't follow through for me. The characters for the most part were fun, if inconsistent, and unfortunately much of the plot was simply too convenient or too convoluted, with very little in between.

If you're just looking for a fun little sapphic regency romp with some wild twists and turns and don't need to dive too deep into character, this could be for you—unfortunately as a very character centric reader, it wasn't for me.

Thank you to Netgalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

Honestly, this one just didn't stick out to me. I really don't have any memory of it while coming back to write this review.

3.5 ⭐️s rounded up to 4
Thank you so much to Netgalley for sending me an ARC in exchange for review!

Time and Tide is a queer historical romance. Following Samantha, an “obnoxiously bi” 21st century progressive as she nearly dies in a plane crash, only to wake aboard a British naval vessel in the year 1806, it blends the historical drama of Outlander with delightfully uncouth and sarcastic narration any modern girl will surely find relatable. Fending off unwanted marriage proposals and other menaces of the historical patriarchy, Sam’s biggest torment and triumph is meeting the famed literary hero, Margaret Goodenough, known for penning the first lesbian kiss in history. But Sam knows Margaret’s bravery and literary prowess was born of her secret affair with a rich patron known only as “The Wealthy Widow”, so as Margaret starts to fall for her instead, Sam finds herself torn between the love she’s always wanted and the fear that, in claiming that love, she will change the course of queer history forever.

This book excels in two areas: the concept and the voice! Blatantly queer historical romance is something I am loving. Samantha’s narration is also a treat—it’s funny, digestible, and wonderfully sarcastic. The main reason this was not a 5-star read for me was the pacing. I felt the relationships that Sam develops were largely rushed and ended up coming across a tad shallow at times. However, this was not enough to undercut my enjoyment, and this book was overall a fun adventure of a time. Anyone looking to stan a bi queen should add this to their TBR!

Sam has just broken up with her girlfriend, and her parting gift was the famous Queer novel “The Welshman’s Daughters”. Sam knew it well, because her ex quoted it all the time, and she had watched many adoptions on TV of the story. But it was not her favorite,and she threw it in the trash of the plane ride that she had hoped would be a romantic trip for the two of them.


Then, the plane explodes, and Sam is thrown into the ocean off Gibraltar, but instead of 2024, it is 1805, and the Battle of Trafalgar has just taken place, and the Welshman’s Daughter would be published in 1807.


Like any good Victorian or Regency novel, there are a lot of coincidences that tie people together, but this is done without hitting us over the head. Each thing that happens is logical, and explained.


Good time travel stories have to have some logic to them. So, the story can be good, but if the ending doesn’t wrap things up, then it is all a cheat, and all the build up is for nothing. That isn’t what happens with this story, I am happy to say.


I love how Sam manages to make her way in the world, knowing enough that she as a woman can’t do anything without friends or family, or unfortunately, a man.


I also love how Sam tries, but doesn’t always succeed in trying to match the current language, and swears like a sailor. She also is very sexual, and we get descriptions of those sexual encounters. Be warned, the F word is used early and often.


So, amazing book. Really well done. I look forward to anything J. M. Frey writes next. In the meantime, pre-order this one, if you love sapphic regency time travel stories.


Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review. This book will be published the 12th of November 2024.