Time After Time by Tamara Ireland Stone

About the book

Time After Time is the second book in the young adult ‘Time Between Us’ series by Tamara Ireland Stone. The book was published on 24^th October by Corgi Children’s and it is 400 pages long. I received a copy of this review through NetGalley.

Plot Synopsis

Anna and Bennett are in a long distance relationship… but with a difference. Anna lives in Chicago 1995 and Bennett comes from San Francisco in 2012. They never should have met, never should have fallen in love… but they did and now they can’t go back to being without each other. However, Bennett is only able to travel back to ’95 for short periods of time which puts a huge amount of strain on the relationship and also causes him to lose time in his own life. Both Anna and Bennett are confident they can make things work but after witnessing something he shouldn’t have, Bennett isn’t so sure. Will he be able to keep the future he wants with Anna or use his ability to time travel for something else entirely?

What I thought

The first book in this series, Time Between Us was one of my favourite books of 2012 and it has been a long wait for the sequel.

In this book, Anna and Bennett are now in a pretty good relationship, even though Bennett has to travel back in time in order to see his girlfriend. I really enjoyed the problems that came with the time travel aspect of this book. It isn’t easy for Bennett to leave his regular life and to lie to the people he loves in order to see Anna. He does have his own life to live, his own school to go to and his own friends to see but Anna is so important to him. There is a lot more of Bennett and his home life put into this book and I really enjoyed getting to know more about him instead of Anna.  

Sadly, I didn’t completely enjoy where the plot was taken in this book. In the first book, I felt as though there was quite a lot of excitement and a lot to find out about but in this one, I didn’t feel that there was much of either of those things in this book. While Anna and Bennett come across problems in their relationship, I found them to be a bit bland. I wanted bigger problems or problems that caused greater consequences. What I mean by that is that there just wasn’t a lot of urgency in the plot and it just plodded along at a quite steady pace.

However, there were a few new things that happened in Time After Time that I did like. There were questions raised about Bennetts ability and what he could actually use it for. Not only that but what would he use it for. There was quite a lot going on regarding the right choices to make and what would happen should Bennett change things too much in the past. These were the aspects of this book that I did really enjoy because it was about time travel. I wanted more of this and slightly less about the relationship between the two main characters; or for them and the time travel to be better intertwined.

Being a book about time travel, there are obvious references to the two different years visited, among a few that aren’t. I absolutely loved the things that brought into the story to make it both current and to give older readers a sense of nostalgia. Bennett and his sister use the ability to time travel to see their favourite bands and very current names such as Maroon 5 were mentioned and some certain things about Adam Levine which made me very happy. Then, there were mentions of awesome ‘90s films such as Empire Records (which is a favourite of mine) that really made me smile.

While I didn’t completely love this book, I did enjoy reading it and being immersed in the lives of Anna and Bennett once again. The ending was pretty good though and it left a lot of questions for what could happen next.