Publication Date: March 11, 2025
One of the greatest love stories in history gets derailed when a struggling poet at Cambridge runs into a time-traveler who agrees to help him find his muse—a thoughtful and uplifting romantic comedy for fans of About Time and The Midnight Library.
Cambridge University, 2005: Student Joe Greene scribbles verses in the margins of his notebook, dreaming of a future where his words will echo through the ages, all while doubting it could ever happen.
Then, the future quite literally finds him—in the form of Esi. She’s part of a time-traveling tour, a trip for people in the future to witness history’s greatest moments firsthand. The star of this tour? Joe Greene. In Esi’s era, Joe is as renowned as Shakespeare. And he’s about to meet Diana, a fellow student and aspiring actress, who will become his muse and the subject of his famous love poems.
But Esi is harboring a secret. She’s not here because she idolizes Joe—actually, she thinks his poetry is overrated. Something will happen at Cambridge this year that will wreck Esi’s life, and she’s hell-bent on changing it. When Esi goes rogue from her tour, she bumps into Joe and sends his destiny into a tailspin. To save both their futures, Esi becomes Joe’s dating coach, helping him win over Diana. But when Joe’s romantic endeavors go off-script—and worse, he starts falling for Esi instead—they both face a crucial question: Is the future set in stone, or can we pen our own fates?
A time-traveler goes off-script, leaving a famous poet and writer’s future in doubt in Love and Other Paradoxes by author Catriona Silvey, asking the question: Is the future set in stone, or can we pen our own fates?
Esi travels all the way back to 2005—yes, 2005—with a group of people sent to simply observe history’s greatest moments firsthand. Their target is a student at Cambridge University—young and trying to figure things out, worrying about his future. But in the future, he will be as renowned as the great Shakespeare.
This book was different. The plot was original and unique, which I found myself genuinely enjoying. We were all young once and full of uncertainty about our life and where we were going with it.
The way the story unfolds is so clever. There is all the angst that the main character has to go through, only to realize that he creates his own future that will work out just fine as long as he’s doing what makes him happy. His decisions are based on what he wants, not what other people think he wants. We all need to remember that we are the ones who can make ourselves happy, and no one else can.
Love and Other Paradoxes includes an original time-traveling plot that drives this delightful romantic comedy.
Catriona Silvey is the author of the international bestseller Meet Me in Another Life. She was born in Glasgow and grew up in Scotland and England. After collecting an unreasonable number of degrees from the universities of Cambridge, Chicago, and Edinburgh, she settled in Edinburgh where she lives with her husband and children.
