Published By: Jonathan Cape
Pages: 560
Released On: 13/10/2026
Alba DeTamble is a time traveller, slipping unpredictably through decades like her father before her. But the hardest thing she carries isn’t the burden of futures she can’t understand, or pasts she cannot change – it’s a secret: she is in love with two different people.
Each of them offers a different life. Zach lives in the present and can’t follow her when she disappears. Oliver can travel through time, just like she can.
As Alba careens from time to time, moving from the riot-torn Chicago streets of her present to the eerie, timeless Yellow House, and into the digital corridors of the Museum of Lost Souls and a flooded future London, she must face a question she can no longer avoid: how is it possible to love, and live a meaningful life, in an increasingly troubled, fractured world?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Jonathan Cape for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I haven’t read The Time Traveller’s Wife for so long but as soon as this was announced I knew I had to read it, and it also gave me an excuse to read the first one again.
It’s 200+ pages longer than I usually like so it did start on the back foot.
I admit, whilst it’s been a long time since I last read The Time Traveller’s Wife, I never thought it was a book that needed a sequel.
And as bizarre as it sounds, Audrey herself has noted that you don’t actually need to have read the first book before reading this, which I find very odd. How can it possibly hope to build upon this world and these characters if you don’t link it somehow?
I deliberately didn’t read any reviews going into this as I didn’t want to be swayed, but I was struggling too much with it that I did eventually read some, to see if I was alone in my thoughts, and it turns out I wasn’t. I agreed with the majority of what was said.
There are sooooo many characters. I struggle with books that have lots of characters because I forget who they are and how they all link, so I thought it was a me problem, but I can now see it’s one of the biggest criticisms of the book. There’s just too many to keep on top of, and that means that a lot of them don’t get the page time to really prove their worth.
I believe a novel should show the reader what’s happening or how someone is feeling, rather than tell them in black and white. So I appreciate when an author does that. But at times, I felt Audrey hadn’t even done that, and so bits of it…I had no idea really what was going on. There was a lot of reading between the lines but often the lines were huge canyons and there was nothing to grasp hold of.
I really enjoy multiple timelines and POVs but in my opinion, there’s just too many and it’s impossible to keep up with.
I don’t think it’s badly written – although the characters feel a bit…how to describe them…flat. I acknowledge it’s been a long time since I read the first one, but I remember the characters at least being interesting and well written and people whose journey you wanted to go on. But in this one, the original characters and the new, were just so flat, so blasé about everything, quite one dimensional that I couldn’t connect to any of them.
My biggest issue is not with the writing or the characters or the storyline as individual problems. It’s more about her reasons for writing it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a successful author so perhaps I’m mistaken. But if you’re writing a sequel to your bestselling novel, there should be a link, there should be a reason for writing it. But apart from very tenuous links, it doesn’t feel like a sequel at all. It’s less a love story and more a political story. Now I don’t mind books that touch upon real-life events, but I’m living them, so I’d rather escape into a fictional world.
There’s no suggestion this is a direct sequel – other than the main character – and so I don’t understand why she’s not just written this as a standalone with different characters, instead of trying to shoehorn this link that just isn’t really there? Except maybe, if I’m being really pessimistic about it, to ride on the coattails of a book that came out 23 years ago.
I’m afraid to say this wasn’t the success I expected it to be. I had it pre-ordered but due to money issues I had to cancel it, but I was lucky enough to receive this e-arc. And I’m glad, because I would have been disappointed with it had I paid. I have seen a lot of reviews similar to mine, and some more negative, but there have also been a handful of four or five star reviews, and that’s great, I’m so glad other people are getting something out of it, even if I didn’t.
As odd as it seems, perhaps this is most recommended to those who haven’t read the first one, because then there’s no expectations riding on it.
Books By Your Bedside 