Love and Other Paradoxes
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“He felt the words passing through him, like he was a conduit for something greater, taking dictation not from the muse but from a better version of himself.”
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Unfortunately this one didn’t work for me 😬 There’s a time travel element and for some reason when it’s a cute magical realism time travel I find I’m able to escape into the book and just go with it, but this was a “we figured out time travel in the future” type book and I found it didn’t work for me!! It was also a bit repetitive and I didn’t really feel the romance between any of the characters, everyone just felt friendly. It was single POV and so we only hear from Joseph (so definitely different just hearing from the man), I think if we would have gotten to hear from Esi it would have helped. I don’t know, nothing really grabbed me, I’ll be interested to see what ya’ll think! ⭐️⭐️💫
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Thank you NetGalley, Catriona Silvey, and William Morrow for this e-arc, it comes out March 11th!

I'm usually all about a time travel/magical realism romance but sadly this one fell a little flat for me. The premise is cute, with Esi, travelling back to Cambridge University in 2005 to meet a famous poet, Joe only to find herself becoming his de facto dating coach while also trying to change history. Okay on audio, this had lots of potential but was just an okay read for me. Would recommend for fans of books like The time traveller's wife. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

If you knew the future, would it give you hope for the present?

This was such a cutesy romance, but it did feel
like a longer and more fantasy based version of the Seven Year Slip.

Joe, the MMC, he is cringey but so real. Like this character was written from personal experience. But anyways, he comes into contact with a time-traveler in his day to day. This time traveler, Esi, reveals more than she should to Joe about his future including his success as a poet and the love of his life. Esi’s personal goal for being in the past is to change the event that she feels destroyed her family. While Esi is trying to figure out how to alter her present by changing the past, she is offering Joe love advice for him to woo who should be his soulmate.

Enter the last issue - from the time spent together, Joe and Esi, are starting question their attraction to each other. Is Joe’s soulmate actually who they thought it was?


Overall - i LOVE THE CONCEPT. The execution was okay.
I feel that it was have had more impact as Esi’s story. The romance is cute. The time travel idea is well-established.

I would recommend the read!!

I'm not usually ha huge fan of time travel romance, but this one was pretty cute! The story follows Joe and Esi, and even though they had a good story, Joe has not made it on to my book boyfriend list. He seemed nice, but his character was just a little too shallow for me :( Esi was good, but she need more! Now with that being said, she was very devoted and determined, which I always love to see in my fmc

All in all, a cute little read for those that like time travel romances! Thank you so much to NetGalley and William Morrow for the arc!

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC, in return for an unbiased review.

I loved Catriona Silvey's debut novel "Meet Me in Another Life," and eagerly awaited her second novel. I'm so happy that "Love and Other Paradoxes" is even better than "Meet." Don't let the cover art scare you off; this is definitely not a mindless BookTok/Colleen Hoover-style romcom. Like "Meet," it's about a relationship in the midst of time travel and possible paradoxes. The story manages to be wildly original, intelligent (some quantum physics for us nerds), and engaging. Even halfway through the book, I couldn't figure out where Silvey was going with the story, and that's a good thing. 

I highly recommend. In fact, I hate trilogies and sequels, but...if any story screams for a sequel, this is it. I can't bear not knowing what happens next in Joe's life.

Enjoyable cute romcom with loads of wormhole and time travel talk. Everything is handled well. The writing is easy to digest and follow. Makes for a relaxing read.

Love and Other Paradoxes is a beautifully crafted, mind-bending novel that blends romance with high-concept science fiction. Catriona Silvey delivers a story that plays with time, fate, and the choices that define us, all while exploring the emotional depth of love and human connection.

The novel’s structure is ambitious, weaving together timelines and possibilities to keep you engaged and constantly questioning where the story is headed. Silvey’s writing is intelligent and deeply emotional, making the book as thought-provoking as it is heartfelt. The characters feel real and complex, and their relationships drive the story as much as the sci-fi elements do.

Whilst the plot is lighter in tone than a traditional time travel novel, it still carries high stakes for the characters within the story. Their struggles and the emotional weight of their choices make this more than just a playful take on time travel—it’s a novel that genuinely explores what it means to love and lose across different realities.

What I loved most was how Love and Other Paradoxes doesn’t just use time travel as a gimmick—it truly explores its emotional weight. It reminds me of the best of Blake Crouch’s work but with a slant of contemporary romance, making it a perfect read for those who love stories that balance speculative fiction with deep, personal stakes.

This is a must-read if you enjoy sci-fi, which is more about the human condition than just the mechanics of time travel.

A fun, quirky time-travel story! I adored the second half of this so much! I wish the first half had drawn me in, but unfortunately I didn’t find myself relating to or liking any characters or really caring about the outcome of their journey until about 45% into the book. It was a very creative twist on time-travel, snowball effects, butterfly effects, multiverse theories. I just wish there had been a stronger start.

The time travel aspect and romantic shenanigans caught my eye. Struggled a little to connect to Joe and Esi. Not the fault of the writing just did not engage me as much as I hoped they would. Still an interesting read but others might like it more.

This was recommended to me by a friend who loves Olivie Blake and BOY WAS SHE RIGHT! This was infinitely clever and fun. I was absolutely hooked all the way through and thought this was so refreshing. Definitely need to pick up more of her books in the future.

I had so much fun with this one! Love and Other Paradoxes is a time travel love story taking place in 2005. This did kind of feature a love triangle but I actually really enjoyed it. Love triangles are very hit or miss for me but this one was done well and fit in with the story.

The time travel aspect of this story is very small and doesn’t really go into the intricacies of it all making it extremely easy to understand and digest. I feel like a lot of times the time travel can feel very complex and convoluted and this story didn’t feel that way at all. There was a lot of debate about whether your feature is fated and unable to change and I really enjoyed the different perspectives throughout the book.

Joe was a character in the beginning I didn’t care for, I was lowkey hoping for his downfall. However, as the story went on you’re able to see a really big change in his character and by the end I really loved his character and his overall character arc. I did also really enjoy Esi but I do wish we could’ve been able to see some of her POV. We really only got to know Esi surface level and through the perspective of Joe and I think her having her own POV chapters could’ve helped her character become fully fleshed out.

Overall I did have so much fun with this! While I enjoyed Meet Me in Another Life, I think I enjoyed Love and Other Paradoxes even more!

*mRead If You Like:
- Time-travel romances
- Stories set in academic settings
- Narratives exploring the impact of art and literature
- Romantic comedies with speculative elements
- Themes of destiny and self-determination

In 2005, Cambridge University student Joe Greene dreams of literary fame but struggles with self-doubt. His life takes an unexpected turn when he encounters Esi, a time traveler from the future where Joe is celebrated as a literary genius. Esi's mission is personal: to alter an event at Cambridge that has negatively impacted her own life. However, her interference disrupts Joe's destined meeting with his muse, Diana, leading to unforeseen consequences.

As Esi coaches Joe in romance to realign his path, unexpected feelings develop, challenging their perceptions of fate and free will. This novel offers a thoughtful and uplifting exploration of love, destiny, and the ripple effects of our choices, blending humor with poignant insights into the human condition.

Thanks so much to the publisher for my ARC!

I love time-travel, alternate universe with its alternate possibilities, and, of course a good love story. This novel has it all. I have not read any of Catrina Silvey’s other books, but I will definitely check them out now.

3.5 stars, rounded up. This is a book that got stronger as it went on. New adult is not my favorite age group for romance, but Silvey does a good job with her college-age protagonists and produces a fun time-travel plot. Joe is a struggling poet at Cambridge when he accidentally discovers, via a time-traveling tourist, that he is rockstar poet in the future on a par with Shakespeare (suspend disbelief for that aspect, as I just don't see that happening for any poet in this day and age). Not only that, but his muse and love of his life is a famous actress, Diana, who happens to be attending Cambridge at the same time as him. Esi, the time traveler, is hiding out in the past with a mission of her own, but she is drawn into helping Joe woo Diana because of various things that happen/have happened. This is a fun romp that I might have DNF'd if it had been an ARC, so if you like the sound of the plot, be patient with some of the hijinks in the beginning and trust that the characters will grow. Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for a digital review copy.

Love the time travelling aspect. Really liked the main character and the present day side characters, wasn't as into the time traveling character

ok so I thought time travel would work for me, but this one is just too much. I know that this is a me thing. Its a preference on how stories play out for me and totally not the book. thanks for letting me try

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Love and Other Paradoxes by Catriona Silvey is a third person-POV speculative romance. Aspiring poet Joe Greene is studying at Cambridge but is spending more time dreaming about being a poet than actively chasing his future. When he meets Esi and finds out she’s a time traveller, he also learns that he is destined to be the greatest poet of his time and all his poems are based on the love of his life, Diana. Only, he hasn’t met Diana yet and maybe, just maybe, Diana isn’t the one for him.

As a long time romance genre reader, I will admit that I’m very rarely a fan of narratives where the characters try to have a relationship with someone else after they catch feelings. Here, I actually really enjoyed how it was handled. In many ways, Joe is going through the motions, trying to force himself to feel that everlasting passionate love that he’s supposed to have with Diana even after he realizes he loves Esi. Both he and Esi believe they don’t have a future due to their different times and the fact that they could change the future, but the pull is way too strong for either of them to ignore forever. It’s done in a way that feels like Joe is truly trying to be respectful to Diana and also doing what Esi wants from him even if it could lead to all three of them being hurt.

Esi’s arc is directly tied to Joe in multiple ways, one of which being that the last day of her tour is the same date that her mother received an award, an award that led to her mother’s death when she drove to an anniversary event. Joe is linked to a tragedy in her life, but not in a way that is his fault nor does Esi blame him. It’s just how things turned out. She never blames him for it, with most of her animosity towards him in the beginning more related to her resentment to having to read his poems in school and finding him mediocre at best. Esi keeps Joe humble and he sees passion and drive in her.

One of the things that really got my attention was that the entire book was from Joe’s POV. It’s very unusual to have a romance novel or a book so romance-driven written entirely from the male lead’s POV unless it’s a Queer romance. I would honestly love for there to be more romance novels in men’s POVs, to have a variety of interpretations of the romance genre that still adheres to the audience’s expectations.

I would recommend this to fans of romances with light speculative romances, readers who love a bit of poetry and exploration of what it means to be an artist in their romance, and those looking for a romance novel in a male POV

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆ (4/5) – Love and Other Paradoxes by Catriona Silvey is a beautifully mind-bending romance that plays with time in a way that feels fresh and emotional. Joe and Esi’s connection is full of wit and longing, and the book balances humor with deep philosophical questions about fate and choice. While some moments slow down the pacing, the emotional payoff is absolutely worth it—perfect for fans of romance with a speculative twist!

This was a time travel romance in which Joe exist in 2005 and Esi is from the future on a time travel tour in order to witness first hand historical events not fall in love. At first it was little weird and took a little getting use to but once I did I did enjoy the story.

It’s interesting to read a romance in which the male main character for a heterosexual story is the only point of view. This story follows Joseph Greene, an unmotivated poet and student. Strange things—flowers, notes, etc—appear in his mailbox and he feels like people are following him. When he runs into Esi, their encounter (through a series of mishaps) leaves him with a famous book of poems. Oddly, the book is written by him in the future, all about his wife—Diana. Upon discovering he’ll succeed as a poet, he sets about trying to not derail the future and assuming certain things will come to pass. He meets Diana and tries to fall in love with her, but he cannot stop thinking about Esi, the time traveler hoping to stop her mom’s untimely death.

Books about time travel hurt my brain a little, so I tried not to overthink the physics. Overall, fun read and Joseph was easy to root for.