This story moved a little slow but I enjoyed it. This was a new to me narrator and she did a good job.
This story is a time travel historical, I think. 1925 Black Botton, Detroit. 2025 Detroit. Looks different, Sounds different, Feels different, People become different. This this story moves between times and it fine line between time travel and changing history. This story is a love letter to the City of Detroit there places, people and neighborhoods that you know, this story walks us through two very different Detroit. I enjoyed the story the ending was a bit of a surprise. I recommend this book.

This was an interesting book. Time travel and a little historical fiction. This book kept me interested yet didn't suck me in. I liked it and wanted to know what was going on but then through it all I feel it fell flat. I felt like there were really no answers and left more questions! I do think that could have been what the author was going for and if it was then they did a great job but part of me felt it was all headed somewhere then took a turn and I was left unsure of what was going on. It just could be my interpretation. It doesn't mean I didn't like it because I did. So to me it was a good book but not a great book.

🎧 Title: The Edge of Yesterday-a standalone

✍🏾 Author: Rita Woods- new to me author

📅Publication date: 4/29/25 | Read 4/28/25

🗣️Narrator: Dara Brown voices all the characters with standouts from Greer, Leia, and Monty. The reading style brought the text to life, and the author and narrator worked together perfectly. The pacing and flow allowed me to get lost in the story. The narrator paused and announced new chapters and there was a table of contents which helped me follow along.

🏃🏾‍♀️‍➡️Run Time: 10:20

Genre:
*Fantasy/Sci Fi
*Historical Fic
*AA Interests

Tropes:
*time travel-think Outlander, The Butterfly Effect
*family drama
*small town
*magical realism

👆🏾POV: 3rd person, dual

⚠️TW: racism, depression, shooting, D*mn Undiagnosed Disease (DUD)/neurological illness-h

🌎 Setting: 1925 and 2025 Detroit

Summary: Greer and her husband Sebastian move to Detroit after leaving New York. Greer has been diagnosed with an unknown illness that has ended her ballet dancer career. She starts hearing buzzing and is swept back in time to 1925. In 1925 Monty is a black doctor with a bright future from a wealthy and successful family. He gets the same feeling every time Greer time-travels and their futures become intertwined into chaos.

👩🏾 Heroine: Greer Coffey-was a principal dancer for the Harlem company, now has trouble walking & tremors

👨🏾 Hero: Dr. Montgomery "Monty" Gray -a part of the black elite, one of the most powerful/wealthiest families in Detroit.

🎭 Other Characters:

* Sebastian "Bas" Coffey-Greer's husband, architect who works for his family's commercial real estate company
* Wanda Jean-Sebastian's mother, very controlling
* Leia-Greer's BFF
* Isaac McKinney - Greer's father, her mother Delilah is deceased
*Agatha "Aggie" Sifax-29, Monty's fiancée

🤔 My Thoughts: This was a great time travelling story from Detroit 1925 during Prohibition to 2025 where things were more liberated. Greer's journey was a sad fall into madness, and I wish she had listened to Leia. Both her life and Monty's were turned upside down because she fooled with timelines that unraveled their futures.

Rating: 4/5 ✨
Spice level 0/5 🌶️

🙏🏾Thanks to NetGalley, Brilliance Publishing | Brilliance Audio, and Rita Woods for this ALC! I voluntarily give my honest review, and all opinions are my own.

Greer Coffey, principal dancer with a renowned Harlem dance company, who marries Sebastian Coffey, an architect, part of a well known firm. They are happy, till Greer develops a neurological disorder, which completely disrupts both their lives. Returning to their home town of Detroit, she begins moving aimlessly through the streets, wondering what she'll do and worried about her strained marriage and professional future.

One night, she goes through a portal back to 1925 Detroit, and meets Dr. Montgomery Gray, a member of Detroit's wealthy Black community. Monty is expected to constantly strive for the betterment of race, no matter his dreams and the many other competing and difficult situations that exist in the city: struggling and poor immigrants, gang wars due to Prohibition, and the evil of the Klan. Monty is exhausted, and shocked, then amazed to meet Greer.

Not only does she show him that there are remarkable technological changes in her future, but she gets a break from her life of unhappiness. Greer visits several times, finding that each time she returns home to 2025, her body feels strong and capable, but she also sees unforeseen and not always good changes to hers and her immediate circle of family and friends' lives.

Both Greer and Monty become obsessed with one another, with Greer persisting in travelling to 1925 and Monty waiting eagerly to reunite with her.

I was held from the story's opening to its satisfying and melancholic ending by the great writing and wonderful characters.

Greer is deeply unhappy, and gobsmacked by the look of Detroit each time she travels back in time. Monty is a doctor, but would prefer to create music. Unfortunately, his family would not be happy if he indulged his desires, so he is fascinated by the future world Greer opens his mind to. The mechanism for Greer's travel is unimportant. It's more a way to think about what choices would a person make if they felt trapped by their current existence.

I liked the way author Rita Woods showed us a time in Detroit's past when, despite the many challenges, the Black community of the city looked forward to the future. At the same time, Woods skilfully demonstrated how the contact between Greer and Monty affects each negatively, with each set on a course of eventual regret and a solitary life.

It's a novel full of sadness, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I listened to this story, and voice actor Dara Brown uses a soothing tone in her narration, while bringing plenty of emotion to Greer's and Monty's dialogue. I could feel the frustration both had with their lives, while also experiencing the yearning each had for some other life than the one they presently had.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Brilliance Publishing for this ARC in exchange for my review.

Book review: 3.25/5 ⭐️
Genre: magical realism, speculative fiction
Themes: the butterfly effect, race,
📖 Read if you like: The Midnight Library, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Wrong Place Wrong Time

This one will linger in my thoughts. It was a really interesting book that involved one woman’s ability to time travel and her companion’s obsession with the future she speaks on. It is a morality tale to remind readers to live in the present and to be careful what you wish for. At the same time it is haunting exploration of possibility and finding yourself. Thank you to NetGalley and Brilliance Publishing for this audiobook.

Greer is a principal dancer with an all black Harlem company. She is married to a successful architect Sebastian, is passionate about her job and loves her city. When an unknown disorder puts an end to life as she knows is, Greer and Bas move back to their hometown of Detroit. With her life and relationships unraveling, Greer is angry and lonely. When she hears a buzzing sound she miraculously finds herself in a vortex that takes her to 1925 where she meets Dr. Montgomery Gray. Part of Detroit’s black aristocracy, he lives in a world on the edge of collapse. Between gang wars, Klan attacks, a growing poor immigrant populace and prohibition, violence is simmering and there are many expectations on Monte. Frustrated and longing to break free from his confined responsibilities, he is enamoured with a young woman who seems to pop into existence and the future she represents.

What starts as a cautious relationship quickly turns into an exciting obsession for both Greer and Monte. Greer seeks a sort of escapism from her health problems and her new reality by traveling back to 1925. Monte on the other hand is excited about the technological advancements that take place by 2025, and more importantly the opportunities for black people in America. The future feels full of endless possibilities and the past holds a certain nostalgia and safety. Yet with every visit Greer makes to the past, a string in the tapestry of time unravels and the future changes. Loosing focus with their own times, each is destined for a future of loneliness and regret.

This was an amalgamation of genres shedding light on the history of Detroit, while also integrating an element of magic with the time travel. The pace was rather slow at first and I found myself searching for a little more character development, but it was a beautifully written and transportive novel. It was a story that dealt with race, trauma, ancestry and acceptance in a unique way and I learned some new things along the way. The ending felt a little too abrupt for me, but it was fitting with the concept. Overall a very thoughtful and insightful read.

🎧 The narrator Dan Brown was excellent. She seamlessly waded through time and personas in a very soothing tone.

Ok. So let me start off by saying that I tend to LOVE time travel books…. So this was a shoe in for me!
BUT…it’s not really a ‘time travel’ book, so much as having characters who are able to exist in more than one timeline… for short bouts of time…

That being said, we start off with Greer. The year is 2025. She’s a ballerina who’s just had an injury…
She keeps having these strange episodes that the docs have not been able to give a diagnosis for.

Then, we are in the year 1925, and Morty is a physician who is being kind-of pressured into getting married. I mean he’s known the girl forever, and they have been friends, but marriage??

Next thing you know, he has this very STRANGE episode where he finds himself somewhere he doesn’t recognize. Somewhere with very tall, shiny buildings… AND, the women are wearing trousers!!!!!! It’s so odd!
And, one woman he sees is wearing SKIN TIGHT trousers! 😮😮😮😂😂😮😮😮

He can’t get this out of his mind?… and really, who can he share this with? They’ll think he’s crazy!

Additionally, this is during the times of discord with the KKK, and people being bullied…and killed because of the color of their skin.

4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for me!

Great concept. Great execution. Great character building! Maybe there will be a book #2 ????

#TheEdgeOfYesterday by #RitaWoods and narrated nicely by #DaraBrown.
(Strangely, to me, she sounded very much like JanuaryLaVoy, who I love!!)

*** RELEASE DATE IS IN A WEEK ON 4/29/25 !!! So, look 👀 for it then!! ***

Thanks so much to #NetGalley and & #BrillianceAudio for an ARC of the audiobook, in exchange for an honest review.

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This was SO interesting!! I genuinely loved listening to it, and it was such an interesting concept. I really really enjoyed the concept and the audiobook was 👌🏼. One hundred percent recommend! There is some cursing but not a lot. Watching the two main characters navigate different cultures (1925 and 2025) was soooo fun!!

This was a very interesting book and one that will definitely stick with me. I listened to the audiobook for most of it and I really liked the narrator a lot. I thought a lot of this story was well written but I did struggle with the pacing and I wanted the characters a little more developed. This is a story about time travel. Greer’s life isn’t going where she planned on it going because she has a not yet diagnosed disease that has stripped her of her life as a dancer and made things tense with her husband. When he points out that there is little tying them to New York anymore and that he wants to join his family’s business back in Detroit she returns to a hometown she didn’t plan on returning to. But she finds herself slipping from 2025 to 1925. I thought the ending was a little abrupt and again if the pacing had been different I think it could have ended better. In some ways this book would make an excellent episode of Black Mirror. Overall I did enjoy this book and it kept my attention better than most books are this year. Overall I gave this one 3.5 stars rounded up because it did grasp my attention well.

An historical fiction - sci-fi mashup about a young Detroit couple in 2025 and another in 1925. The contemporary woman somehow meets the man from the past. She learns about the black community in the past, snippets of which were originally passed down from her grandmother and mother. He wonders at this pants-wearing woman of the future. But, every time they meet, there’s a change in the timeline. Some seem like good changes but, as her best friend explains, like the flap of a butterfly’s wings these small changes can have outsized influence on the future (chaos theory).
There are loose ends and bits of the story that don’t make any sense. (She doesn’t tell him to buy stock in Apple or Microsoft, for example). Nevertheless, it’s an enjoyable book about time travel and, in many respects, about history repeating itself. The audiobook is well narrated.
My thanks to the author, publisher, @BrillianceAudio, and #NetGalley for early access to the audiobook of #TheEdgeofYesterday for review purposes. Publication date: 29 April 2025.

The Edge of Yesterday is a beautifully written, emotionally resonant novel that blends historical fiction with subtle speculative elements. Rita Woods explores themes of ancestry, trauma, and identity through a powerful, time-bending narrative with richly drawn characters and lyrical prose.

I listened to the audiobook and highly recommend it. Dara Brown’s narration is smooth as silk—her voice has such a calming, captivating tone that really suited the story’s atmosphere. I enjoyed her performance so much, I’m already looking for more books she narrates.

I was a little confused at times about the mechanics of the time travel, but that may be due to the book’s shorter length compared to most in the genre. Still, the emotional impact and immersive world made it a compelling, thought-provoking listen.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."
The narrarator Dara Brown did an excellent job voicing Greer.
Greer's character development is SLOW, but there. I really like the friends more than the main character if I'm being honest. I wish there was more interaction with her best friend in the 2025 storyline.
I thought the lack of explaination of the time travel "worked" in that Greer didn't really know how it was working either. The impact in the future over time was interesting and sad. I liked the overall plot and outcome of the book, because it wasn't cookie cutter neat and sweet. It was well written and well developed.

Thank you NetGalley for the arc of this audiobook! This is a time traveling book about two people that lived 100 years apart in Detroit. The narrators voice was so relaxing and smooth. I’m definitely going to check out more books she has narrated. I am rating this book 3.5 stars because the first half of the book I was a little confused about the time jumps but once it clicked this was a solid little story. I think the choices the characters made and the reactions they all had were very realistic and I really liked that. I will be checking out more by the author.