Verdict: A big, messy, very readable time travel romp that drops a modern bisexual woman into 1805 and lets her fall for a Regency novelist, undercut by a heroine plenty of readers found grating and a sapphic romance that gets less page time than the man who comes before it.
Best for: Adult readers who want Outlander energy in Austen’s England, enjoy fish-out-of-water comedy, and can put up with a loud, swearing narrator and some hard scenes of abuse on the way to a happy ending.
Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5: open door, but the most explicit scenes aren’t the sapphic ones)
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.3/5: a 3.51 Goodreads average across 382 ratings, with a heroine who splits readers down the middle)
Tropes: Time travel, fish out of water, historical secret, Regency setting, bisexual heroine, love triangle, found family, forbidden love, villainous suitor, happily ever after in the past.
Time and Tide by J.M. Frey is a standalone sapphic historical romance with a time travel engine, published by W by Wattpad Books in November 2024, in which Sam Franklin, a bisexual Torontonian dumped right before a trip to Europe, survives a plane crash over the Atlantic and wakes up in 1805 England, where she ends up lodging with Margaret Goodenough, the author whose unfinished novel is supposed to hold the first lesbian kiss in British literature.
On Goodreads it sits at a 3.51 average across 382 ratings and 121 written reviews. That’s a low number for a book Olivia Waite put on the New York Times list of the best romances of 2024, and the gap is the story here. Professional reviewers mostly enjoyed the ride. A lot of regular readers got stuck on Sam. Both reactions are worth hearing before you start.
What Is Time and Tide About?
This is Regency fiction with a modern narrator, so most of the comedy and most of the danger come from the same place: a woman from 2024 doesn’t know the rules, and in 1805 the rules decide who a woman marries, what she owns and whether anyone believes her. The publisher pitches it to fans of Diana Gabaldon, Alexis Hall and Olivia Waite, and the author’s own shorthand, from the announcement of the deal, is “bi Outlander.” It’s an adult book. Nobody frames it as YA, and the content makes that clear.
Sam is loud, profane, bisexual and freshly heartbroken, and she lands in the past with no money, no papers and no way to explain herself. Margaret Goodenough is the opposite kind of outsider: a woman writer in a world that barely allows her one, sharp enough to notice that her strange new lodger doesn’t add up. The story is told from Sam’s point of view the whole way through, which is great for the jokes and less great for getting inside Margaret’s head.
What Makes This Sapphic Time Travel Romance Work
- The fish-out-of-water comedy: Sam’s clashes with Regency manners are the thing readers enjoy most, from dance-floor confusion to her habit of dropping the trivia her dad taught her. Reviewers keep naming the faux pas as the fun part.
- The period detail: The Historical Novel Society reviewer praised Frey’s grasp of daily life in the era, and several Goodreads readers single out the setting and world-building as the strongest element.
- The literary-history stakes: Margaret’s unfinished novel matters to the future, so the forbidden love plot doubles as a question about whether Sam is about to rewrite queer history.
- A villain you can hate: Publishers Weekly called his downfall “satisfying catharsis,” and Goodreads readers describe the antagonist as clear and easy to hate.
- The ending: Readers who mention it describe a happily ever after, and several single it out for praise.
Book Synopsis
Sam Franklin’s girlfriend leaves her at the airport in Toronto, right before the European trip they’d planned together. Sam gets on the plane anyway. Somewhere over the Atlantic it goes down, and when she comes to, she’s being hauled out of the water by the crew of a British warship. The year is 1805. The ship’s captain, Fenton Goodenough, known as Finch, is handsome, kind to her and very interested, and Sam, stranded and grieving and running on adrenaline, is interested back.
Being a single woman with no family and no history in Regency England is dangerous in ways Sam’s modern instincts don’t prepare her for. Her clothes are wrong. Her language is wrong. Her ideas about consent, money and marriage belong to another planet. When the man she trusted lets her down, she’s left with no resources at all, and the only place left to go is the household of the captain’s sisters.
One of them is Margaret Goodenough, a writer Sam already knows from the future, because Margaret’s novel is the one Sam grew up loving. In Sam’s timeline that book is unfinished and famous for a single kiss between two women. Living under Margaret’s roof, Sam has to keep the biggest secret of her life from a woman clever enough to sense it. The closer they get, the harder the question gets: if Sam falls in love with Margaret, is she protecting that book or changing it?
My Review
The premise is a great one, and I’ll say that first. A queer woman crashing into the life of the author of her favourite queer novel is the kind of hook that makes you want to buy the book on the spot, and Frey has fun with it. Sam’s voice is loud and funny, the Regency household around her is drawn with real affection, and the chaos of a modern woman trying to pass in 1805 drives the first half at a good clip.
The second strength is the found family. The Historical Novel Society review, by Kristen McDermott, says she nearly quit early on and ended up calling it “a surprising and engrossing comedy of manners.” I think that’s right. The banter between Sam and the Goodenough sisters is where the book is warmest, and Margaret, when she’s on the page, is the most liked character in it. One reader who didn’t love the book still called her the only redeeming part.
Where it struggles is Sam, and this isn’t just my reading. It’s the single most repeated complaint on Goodreads. At least seven separate reviewers call her annoying or obnoxious, and three more criticise her as flat, inconsistent or reckless. The usual reason is that she doesn’t change: she’s been in the past for a long stretch and still talks and acts like she just walked off a plane. Around that sit the structural problems. Five reviewers say the book is too long or slow in the middle, and two more complain about the pacing. Several think the romance with Margaret is rushed or happens partly off the page. A couple of readers flag errors, including a misspelt Austen epigraph and a Mary Wollstonecraft letter that’s dated after her death.
The expectation to reset is the shape of the romance. This is sold as a sapphic love story, and it does end as one, but the first big relationship on the page is Sam and Finch, and it’s the more explicit of the two. BookPage’s reviewer found the Sam and Margaret romance tepid by comparison and wanted more heat between them. One Goodreads reader complained there were too many love interests. If you want women-only romance from page one, this isn’t that. If you want a bisexual heroine whose story ends with a woman, you’re in the right place.
The other thing to know going in is the darkness. Around a third of the reviews I read mention attempted sexual assault, abuse or PTSD, and at least one reader was angry that the book carries no content warnings. It’s a comedy of manners with a frightening villain in the middle of it.
My honest note: A great hook and a fun, warm household let down by a heroine who wears out her welcome and a sapphic romance that arrives late. If Sam’s voice works for you in the first chapter, you’ll probably love this. If it grates, it won’t stop grating.
| Element | In Time and Tide |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Sam Franklin and Margaret Goodenough: a stranded modern woman and the Regency novelist she grew up reading |
| Core tropes | Time travel, fish out of water, secret identity, forbidden love, love triangle, found family |
| Setting | England in 1805, after a plane crash over the Atlantic drops a woman from 2024 into the Napoleonic era |
| Heat level | 3/5: open door, with the most explicit scenes between Sam and a man |
| Series | Standalone. Adult. Ends with a happily ever after in the past |
| Content notes | Attempted rape and sexual assault, physical abuse and manipulation, PTSD, misogyny, explicit sex (M/F and F/F), heavy profanity, plane crash |
How Spicy Is Time and Tide?
I didn’t find a romance.io listing for it, so this number comes from the reviews. They agree it’s open door, but they disagree about how much. One Goodreads reader put the spice at 1 to 2 out of 5 and called it infrequent. Others describe explicit sex between women and between Sam and a man. Foreword Reviews mentions “steamy scenes,” and BookPage notes that the sex between Sam and Finch is on the page while the scenes between Sam and Margaret stay vague. A 3/5 is the fairest middle point.
The thing to flag in advance is that the heat and the threat sit close together. Several readers count assault scenes alongside sex scenes, and one complains about the ratio between the two. Nobody flags anything kinky. If you want a Regency sapphic romance where the heat is all between the women, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics is a better fit, and Mortal Follies sits at a similar open-door 3/5.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you enjoy a modern narrator loose in a historical setting, you like a bisexual heroine with a messy love life, you want an Outlander or Bridgerton mood with a queer ending, and you’re happy with plot over slow character work.
You may want to skip it if: a stubborn, sweary heroine who doesn’t grow will drive you up the wall, you want the sapphic romance to be the whole story from the start, you need tight historical accuracy, or attempted sexual assault on the page is a hard limit.
In short: a fun, flawed time travel story whose payoff depends almost entirely on whether you can stand its narrator.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)
This book’s reach came from critics more than from a reader wave. Olivia Waite, whose own Feminine Pursuits series is one of the publisher’s comparison titles, named it in the New York Times best romances of 2024, and it picked up reviews from Publishers Weekly, Foreword Reviews, BookPage and the Historical Novel Society. NetGalley shows ratings from 112 members, so a lot of early readers came through advance copies. I didn’t find any Reddit discussion of it, and the reader numbers are modest: 382 ratings two years after release. I couldn’t reach StoryGraph’s figures or the Amazon star breakdown for this one. The book has an older history too. Frey first self-published an earlier version under the title A Woman of the Sea before revising it for Wattpad’s imprint.
There’s an audiobook as well. Dreamscape Media released it on May 27, 2025, narrated by Hayden Bishop, and it runs 11 hours and 35 minutes. At least one Goodreads reviewer listened to it and called it a fast-paced summer read.
Prefer audio? Listen to Time and Tide on Libro.fm, the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The comedy comes up first. Readers enjoy Sam’s faux pas and her dad’s fun facts, and Outlander, often paired with Bridgerton, is the comparison they reach for most. Period detail is the second most praised thing, along with the strong female side characters. Readers who loved it call the prose lyrical and the voices distinct, and several praise how the book handles Sam’s PTSD and the theme of women’s autonomy. The happy ending gets warm mentions. One notable minority view: a few readers who liked Sam say they came around to her after hating her at first, which suggests the voice is a hurdle more than a dealbreaker for some.
What readers argue about and complain about: Sam, above everything. At least seven reviewers find her annoying, and the mechanism is consistent: she always has to be right, she doesn’t adapt, and her modern slang survives a long stay in 1805. The second theme is the dark material. Eight reviewers name attempted assault directly, two more refer to the threat of it, and one says plainly that the book needed trigger warnings for rape, abuse and PTSD. Third: length. Five readers say it’s too long or drags in the middle, while the climax feels abrupt to two of them. Fourth, the romance itself. A few say it’s believable and sweet, others find it rushed, unconvincing or partly off the page. The trade reviews split on this too: Foreword called it “an exciting queer romance,” while BookPage found the central relationship lacking spark. Smaller notes, each from one or two readers: errors in the epigraph, a few historical slips, and the time travel never being explained.
The standalone question worth asking first: It’s a complete standalone with no sequel announced. The time travel itself is never explained. Sam goes through a rip in time over the Atlantic and that’s that, which two readers mention as a frustration. There’s no portal to manage and no rules to learn, and the book’s real time travel question is whether Sam changes history by loving Margaret. Readers say Sam accepts her life in the past and gets her happily ever after there, though at least one wanted more closure with the family she left in the present and another wanted an epilogue.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Time and Tide have a happy ending?
Yes. Readers describe a happily ever after for Sam and Margaret, with Sam staying in the past. A couple of reviewers found the climax abrupt and wanted an epilogue.
Is Time and Tide a lesbian romance?
It’s a sapphic romance with a bisexual heroine. Sam’s first relationship in 1805 is with a man, Captain Fenton Goodenough, before her romance with his sister Margaret becomes the center of the book and its ending.
How spicy is Time and Tide?
About a 3/5. It’s open door, with explicit scenes between Sam and a man and vaguer scenes between Sam and Margaret, and one reader rated the spice only 1 to 2 out of 5.
How does the time travel work in Time and Tide?
It isn’t explained. Sam’s plane goes down over the Atlantic and she wakes up in 1805, and the book spends its energy on whether she’ll change history rather than on how she got there.
Is Time and Tide YA or adult?
Adult. It has explicit sex, heavy profanity and scenes of attempted sexual assault and abuse, and no reviewer treats it as a young adult book.
Is there a Time and Tide audiobook?
Yes. Hayden Bishop narrates the Dreamscape Media edition, released May 27, 2025, and it runs 11 hours and 35 minutes.
If You Loved Time and Tide, Read These Next
For the time-crossed longing without the Regency, This Is How You Lose the Time War is the obvious next step, though it’s far lower on heat and far higher on lyricism. For a sapphic Regency romance with open-door heat kept between the women, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics is by the critic who championed this book. And if the comic chaos was your favourite part, Ladies in Hating keeps you in the Regency with a lighter, all-sapphic rivals story. There’s more on our historical lesbian romance hub, in our list of sapphic books like Bridgerton, and across all our book reviews.
The Bottom Line
Time and Tide wants to be a queer Outlander with Austen’s manners and a love letter to lost lesbian literature, and a lot of it works. The comedy is fun, the household is warm, and the villain gets what he deserves. What doesn’t work as well is the heroine, who many readers found exhausting, the length, which sags in the middle, and the sapphic romance, which arrives late and stays cooler than the one with Finch. If a loud, flawed narrator and a few dark detours don’t put you off, it’s an entertaining trip to 1805 with a happy ending at the end of it. Check Time and Tide on Amazon
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Time and Tide ranks as a high-concept sapphic time travel comedy. It’s fun and warm, held back by a divisive narrator and a slow middle, and it’s best read for the fish-out-of-water chaos rather than a slow burn between two women.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5
- ✓ 3.51 average across 382 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ Named a best romance of 2024 by the NYT
- ✓ Four trade reviews, mostly positive
- ✓ Sam is the most repeated complaint
Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.2/5
- ✓ Sam and Margaret is the endgame
- ✓ Readers who loved it call it sweet
- ✓ Forbidden love with history at stake
- ✓ Rushed, late and cooler than the M/F
Characters ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5
- ✓ Margaret is the most liked character
- ✓ Goodenough sisters praised as found family
- ✓ A villain readers love to hate
- ✓ Seven reviewers call Sam annoying
Writing ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ Prose called lyrical by fans
- ✓ Period detail praised by HNS
- ✓ Distinct voices and quick banter
- ✓ Epigraph typos and historical slips
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ PTSD portrayal praised by several readers
- ✓ Regency misogyny painted starkly, per PW
- ✓ Villain’s comeuppance lands as catharsis
- ✓ Trauma underexplored until late, some say
Heat Level ★★★☆☆ 3/5
- ✓ Open door, no romance.io listing found
- ✓ Explicit M/F scenes with the captain
- ✓ F/F scenes described as vaguer
- ✓ Assault scenes sit close to the sex
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ HEA, with Sam staying in 1805
- ✓ Standalone with nothing left hanging
- ✓ Several readers single it out for praise
- ✓ Abrupt climax, no family closure
Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 3.2/5
- ✓ 11 hour 35 minute audiobook for round two
- ✓ Comedy and faux pas hold up
- ✓ At least one reader plans a reread
- ✓ 408 pages with a saggy middle
Genre check for time travel readers: The time travel is a one-way trip with no mechanism explained, the sapphic relationship is central to the ending but shares the first half with a male love interest, the book is adult, and it ends with a happily ever after in the past.
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Find more like it: this book is on our list of sapphic time travel books.