Time Loops & Meet Cutes | Jackie Lau

Am I the only person who loves time travel stories? Apparently not since authors keep writing them. Time Loops & Meet Cutes is on the light side of this genre and I enjoyed it. Did I love it? No, but it was a good and quick romance read.

Noelle is a hard-working, lonely (recently heartbroken) engineer in Toronto. She walks through a Night Market one night and stops for dumplings at an unassuming dumpling stand manned by an older woman who promises her that she'll get what she wants most. It's June 20 and when Noelle wakes up the next day, it's still June 20. And this goes on for (we come to learn) many months. Work she completed on the 20th, is undone the next day because it is, after all, June 20 again. The plot is how Noelle figures out how and why she's in the time loop and how and why Cam, a bystander, becomes such a big part of it.

What I didn't like about it is that it gets a tad redundant in the middle as Noelle goes through this process, along with her friend Avery who, she discovers, ate the same dumplings and is in the same time loop. Some reviewers have said that Cam's chapters didn't add anything, but I think they didn't add enough. I would have liked to know more about Cam and his family to even out the family angle with Noelle. Likewise the sketch of Avery is just that. A bit sketchy. It becomes clear at the end but a few breadcrumbs along the way would have been nice.

So, airplane or vacation read on your list? This is your book. To top it off there are fantastic descriptions of the Chinese food that Noelle and Cam eat throughout and it also makes Toronto sound like a good place to visit!