Time and Tide
The first few chapters of this time-slip queer romantasy plunge the reader into a chaotic narrative that veers from a time-travel inducing plane crash to a Georgian naval battle to a cringey sex scene. When I reached a description of violent near-rape a quarter of the way in, I almost put the book down, but I’m glad I stayed with it. Frey has crafted a surprising and engrossing comedy of manners featuring a profane, cranky, bisexual Gen-Z heroine thrust into the world that produced Jane Austen and her fictional literary colleague, Margaret Goodenough. Armed only with as much knowledge of the time period as could be gleaned from watching a TV adaptation of Goodenough’s most famous novel in 2023, Samantha Franklin turns a stubborn will to survive into a heartfelt friendship with the kind and loving family of Margaret and her brother, Captain Fenton Goodenough, the dashing naval officer who rescues Samantha from the wreckage of a crashed airliner in the middle of the Battle of Trafalgar.
To say more would ruin the many twists of the novel’s long and satisfying plot. By the time this eventful story comes to a close, the reader will want more of the complex, big-hearted, passionate characters, as well as Frey’s command of the details of daily life in 1806 England. The outlandish plot depends on far too many coincidences, but in that it resembles the gothic novels of the period, and the amusing dialogue between the slangy, plainspoken Sam and her proper English found family keep the story fresh and appealing all the way through.
