Look at me, knocking down the books in the TBR! This one has actually been in progress since January 6, and is the sort of fun romantic comedy I’d normally polish off in four or five days. But I finally finished it today, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.
In “Love and Other Paradoxes,” Cambridge student and would-be poet Joe Greene starts to notice odd objects left in his mail cubby — rose petals, white feathers, Paris snow globes — and odd tourists who seem to be following him around. He wanders into a coffee shop some distance from the colleges, where he meets a young woman who seems to recognize him. When she drops a book of poems from her bag — a book titled “Meant to Be,” by Joseph Greene — he snatches it and runs off, discovering that he is destined to be the Byron of his age, with a beautiful, famous actress as his muse.
The young woman, Esi, isn’t a fan of Joseph Greene’s poetry, though; she’s there on another mission, to prevent her mother (also a Cambridge student) from winning an award that will lead to her untimely death decades in the future. Joe and Esi form an unlikely pact, trying to prevent Esi’s mother’s future from happening while ensuring that Joe’s does.
And along the way, of course, they fall in love … because it’s a kissing book, and that’s what we demand!
As a time travel romance, “Love and Other Paradoxes” plays it pretty safe on the science fiction side. There’s a bit of hand waving about how the mechanics of time travel works, and different theories of chance, destiny, free will, and alternate universes, but all in the service of an entertaining love story. It’s fun, funny, and heartfelt, which is what I was hoping for when I grabbed it off the library shelf.
(Also, this is a low-heat, closed-door book so far as the kissing goes: sex is implied, but doesn’t occur on the page.)
