If you like contemporary romance with a bittersweet flavour and a hint of the fantastical, then A Different Time is the book for you. The simple plot alternates between Keith, a comic book nerd who has no direction in life, and Lindsey, who loves to draw but is lonely and similarly doesn’t know what path to take. These two introverted young people make a connection across thirty years, through a video diary. If you can suspend your disbelief, it’s quite a sweet story with genuinely nice protagonists.

I did have some issues with the book. There’s a lot of telling rather than showing. It could have done with more thorough proofreading (although this is my conclusion with most books these days). I thought that Lindsey’s mother seemed an unnecessarily cruel character. I think I spotted an anachronism – a 1980s camcorder having an LCD playback screen and fitting into the palm of your hand?!

I wanted to know what happened in the end. Would Keith and Lindsey ever meet? Is there a way they can be together? This is what kept me reading. It’s not my usual genre but I thought the story was well-crafted and warm-hearted.

The book is Michael K Hill’s debut novel and is available from Amazon now.

This post is part of the massive Write Reads blog tour! Here are the blogs participating in the first week of the tour: