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Review: In Time With You

In Time With You In Time With You by Kristin Dwyer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

🌅Having recently lost someone, I’m very well acquainted with grief, and grief is a tricky thing; it reshapes you, blurs your choices, and sometimes makes you wonder what you’d give up to rewrite the past. In Time With You by Kristin Dwyer captures that ache with devastating clarity.

The novel follows Nieve Monroe, whose life shatters when her boyfriend, Carter, dies saving her from drowning. Consumed by guilt, she withdraws from everyone—including Max, Carter’s best friend, who blames her too. Then one morning, Nieve wakes up not in her grief but a year earlier, with the chance to undo everything. 

Determined to keep Carter safe this time, she makes different choices. But the more she tries to keep him safe, the closer she drifts to Max, a boy she thought she hated. What begins as an impossible attempt to protect Carter turns into something far messier: a story about love, loss, and the cost of rewriting fate.

This book is beautifully raw. Nieve’s voice carries all the contradictions of grief, self-blame, longing, defiance, and the stubborn desire to hope again. The time-loop element adds urgency and weight to every decision she makes, while the romance that blooms between her and Max feels both inevitable and startling. Dwyer doesn’t shy away from showing how complicated grief can make love, and she handles the “what ifs” of second chances with nuance.

The writing was lyrical and deeply quotable, with lines that linger long after the book ends: “You are not defined by one moment. Hell, you aren’t even the sum of all those moments together. Change is what reminds us we are alive.” Passages like these elevate the story beyond romance into something reflective and soul-searching.

Ultimately, In Time With You is a heartbreaker of a novel that stitches hope into its wounds. Fans of You’ve Reached Sam and Before I Fall will recognize the same emotional intensity here, but Dwyer makes it her own. It’s a story about love in all its messiness—first love, lost love, and the terrifying, beautiful risk of loving again.

A huge thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this eARC. I truly enjoyed this book – love, love, love speculative romances! #NetGalley #StMartinsPress #KristinDwyer
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5/5 stars)
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