ARC Review: This Time Around by Marina Pirlimpou

A second-chance romance that had so much potential at its fingertips, but somewhere along the way, it lost the spark.

The book starts with Madison Pierce, who is on her way to work at a publishing house, going about her usual routine, when her life nearly ends in a road accident. She’s saved by Nate Keaton, someone she vaguely remembers from high school. That moment should have been the start of something, but not in the way you'd expect. One second, they’re staring down death together, and the next, they’re teenagers again, back in their high school days, while the world around them carries on like this is perfectly normal.

Only, it isn’t. And that’s where things started to fall apart for me.

When I first read the blurb and signed up for the ARC, I was very excited to read a time-travel, second-chance romance. The excitement was still there when I read the first few chapters, but as the story progressed, it no longer made sense and felt like all romance novel clichéss were force-fitted and the story was somehow developed to make it happen.

Madison and Nate seem to shrug off the biggest question of all. How are they back in time? Why aren’t they doing more to understand what’s happened? It came up once, and then it was brushed aside as though slipping into their teenage selves again required no explanation. I mean, if I were Madison, I’d want to run back to the present, but even if that’s not the case, I would still want to go look for answers and find my way out while experiencing all the things Madison did. I loved how their relationship developed back in time, but I feel like bringing in the reality check that this isn’t the present somewhere along the way would’ve felt more believable.

Their relationship, on the other hand, had its charm. I genuinely liked the way their friendship took shape the second time around. Their banter felt sweet, and the emotional bond between them had its moments. But even that couldn’t balance out the way the story drifted further from its core idea. At some point, the time-travel became more of a forgotten detail than a driving force.

Then comes the second part. Suddenly, we’re back in the present, and the story moves on like it’s picking up from where things ended, except it’s twenty years later. Still, no one asks why any of it happened. There’s a strange silence around the cause or meaning behind the whole event. It felt like a plot device left hanging mid-air.

By the time I reached the last stretch, I found myself skimming through the book rather than actually reading it because I was no longer hooked to know what happens next, since there wasn’t any suspense, just plain sight, predictable scenes, and romance novel cliches.

Rating: ⭐⭐/5

This could have easily been a great second-chance grumpy sunshine romance. It had all the right ingredients, but didn’t pull them together in a way that felt complete. If only the story had dug deeper, paused long enough to ask its own questions, or given the characters a reason to care that they were suddenly teenagers again, it might’ve been one of my favorites. Thank you LoveNotes PR for the opportunity!