WELCOME TO MY STOP FOR THE BOOKTAMINS BLOG TOUR OF “FOR THE LOST TIME” BY HEATHER BLAIR
First of all I wanted to thank Booktamins for this opportunity and for the chance to read this beautiful book!
Genres: Chick Lit, Contemporary, Historical Fiction, LGBTQIA, New Adult, Romance
Publication day: 21st April 2020
THE PLOT
Diego Delgado’s life is turned upside down when he closes his eyes in 2020 and opens them one century before, alone and penniless. Forced to live in a time and world he doesn’t know anything about, Diego decides to do anything in his power to try to understand what happened to him and how he could come back to his time, his best friend and ex wife Kendra and his daughter Molly.
In the America of 1920 he’s helped by a kind factory owner, Henry Wallingford, he meets a peculiar mystic, Madama Olah (Dora) and his life is complicated and changed by the charismatic and exuberant heir, Thomas Greely.
But while trying to find some answers, he finds himself involved in the life of the roaring twenties and, above all, in that of the beautiful and complex Thomas, their attraction hard to fight.
MY THOUGHTS
I really liked For the lost time. The book is a very quick and sweet read, with interesting characters, both the main ones, Diego, Thomas and Henry, than side ones like the stubborn Kendra and the strong-willed Clementine.
Diego finds himself in a world he’s not used to, saved by the generosity and gut feeling of the kind Henry, but he’s heartbroken and confused by something he doesn’t know how and why it happened to him and he misses his family.
He’s determined to find a way back, to not let himself get distracted, but while frequenting his benefactor and working in his factory, his path crosses Thomas’, the buoyant and brilliant son of the co-owner of the factory, the dancer, the heir, the curious and smiling person he can’t help be attracted to.
While Thomas is descripted as exuberant, too curious, maybe annoying sometimes with his attitude and insistence, the reader, through Diego’s point of view learns how hard was and is his apparently perfect life.
Adopted in China by two globetrotter, Thomas suffered and suffers for his family’s lack of attention and love, growing up spoiled and unloved, finding comfort and attention only in Henry, his father’s friend and co-owner (and neighbor), kind and affectionate. Behind Thomas’s smiles, his dancing and friendship with his friend Clementine, his curiosity, there’s an intense sadness and loneliness.
Henry is another interesting character, with a heavy and painful past and trauma and it was hard and shocking to read about Henry’s nightmares and past memories. His kindness and love for Thomas are a constant in both of their lives, as his protection and desire to see him happy.
The three main characters are gay and, if Diego in 2020 is free to love and marry the person he loves, being gay in the America of 1920 is risky and dangerous, as Henry’s past proved it.
The future is a common element in both Thomas’ and Diego’s situation.
Thomas, with his apparently golden and rich life, is terrified of a future that seems already written, that his parents want to impose on him, forcing and threatening him to go to college, to inherit their factory, throwing back in Thomas’s face his adoption and what and where he would have gone without them.
At the same time Diego is burdened by the knowledge of his real life a century in the future and unable to be happy of the present, torn between his love for Molly and his blossoming one for Thomas and the friendship with Henry and Dora.
His relationship with them is very cute, I love Dora’s help, her character is joyous and funny and Henry’s protectiveness and affection.
Thomas and Diego are absolutely wonderful together and the way their relationship changes during the book is sweet. At first Diego isn’t interested in Thomas’ attention and attempt to be his friend, too caught up with his own problems, but slowly they start to see one other as they really are and their romance starts, blossoming in a cute and tender relationship. A relationship complicated by Diego’s real time and family.
I won’t write anything more because I don’t want to spoiler anything.
I liked the idea of destiny and the whole concept of found souls in different times, but I wished the whole time travel (the reason why and how it happened) would have been explained better and I found the way Diego managed to familiarize himself in a time a century earlier a bit too overlooked, because I expected more difficulty in fitting in.
Nevertheless I liked this book, the story is sweet and tender, its characters interesting, stubborn and complex and through their experience the reader is involved in their romance and love and it’s really cute and adorable.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Heather Blair is the author of new adult romance novels including “Lucid Dreaming” and “Wide Awake.” She was born and raised in Vermont and has spent much of her adult life in New York and Los Angeles. She currently resides in Connecticut with her two cats.
EXCERPTS
EXCERPT ONE
There he was, standing by the darkened bay window, staring ominously into the night sky—the most handsome man Thomas Greely had ever laid eyes on.
He was very tall, over six feet to be sure. Perhaps six foot two? Three? And in all that long space between the top of his umber head and the soles of his umber oxfords, there stood an astonishing figure. He was broad-shouldered and slender-waisted, his posture delicately sloped at the shoulders as if he carried a lofty burden upon them.
From where he stood, paralyzed with curiosity, Thomas could make out only the man’s profile. A long neck dotted with oversized freckles, a square jaw, a subtly cleft chin. His single visible eye showed an iris so dark one could hardly distinguish where it ended and the pupil began. The look of it might have been sinister were it not so spellbinding.
Every muscle in Thomas’s body ached to reach out and touch him. To trace the line of that commanding jaw with the pad of his thumb and follow it to the tip of his sturdy chin. To connect the dots of those beauty marks and discover the shapes they made. To brush the back of his fingers against the grain of his sandpaper stubble.
Thomas then began to wonder why the stubble was there at all and why the hair atop the man’s head hung a bit loosely in one spot. Why such sorrowful crinkles marked the wide plane of his forehead, and most puzzling of all, why did he cast a million-mile stare out the window with such torrid focus?
Why, why, why?
EXCERPT TWO
The restaurant Diego soon found himself in was far classier than the art deco diner where he usually ate lunch. After almost a month in 1920, he’d finally begun to understand what prices constituted as “high” and he knew that the eighty-five cent lunch specials at Caroline’s would have been too pricey for his blood. Incensed, he slapped the menu down on the table.
“Are you trying to rub it in my face?”
“Am I trying to what?”
“Where do you get off taking me to a nice place like this when you know that I…” He trailed off. Thomas’s mouth parted as he realized what Diego was trying to say. When you know that I’m homeless.
“I meant no insult. I simply have a thing for the creamed chicken on toast they serve here. Jeepers, friend, do you really think I would do such a pig-headed thing?”
“Yes,” Diego answered simply. “And why do you keep calling me friend?”
A solitary laugh puffed from Thomas’s lungs.
“You don’t consider me a friend?”
“I consider you a spoiled rich kid who’s never been told no in his life and wouldn’t know how to handle it.” Diego hadn’t meant to be so harsh. He was like a cornered animal, lashing out on instinct.
“Wrong on all accounts,” Thomas replied coolly. “I’m not rich, my parents are. I’m not a kid, I’m twenty-one years of age, and I’ve been told no plenty of times and I handle it by simply choosing to ignore it.”
Purchase Link
Amazon US – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084H5FD62
Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51079492-for-the-lost-time
Media Links
Website – https://heatherblairauthor.blog/
Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18185508.Heather_Blair
Twitter – https://twitter.com/IamHeatherBlair
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/iamheatherblair/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/heatherblair.author/
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