SynopsisThree strangers’ lives are forever changed when they’re all drawn to a mysterious agency claiming to have unlocked the secret to time travel.
Anna, Teddy, and Jade are on a collision course. The Agency is the cause. It is also the solution.
On a quiet road nestled within the bustle of Sydney lies a nondescript storefront known simply as the Time Travel Agency. At once a confounding mystery and a beacon of hope, the Agency seems to attract those who need it most. Single mother Anna is in desperate need of change, and the Agency gives her the chance to begin her career—and life—anew. Teddy is a genius at salvaging businesses but needs saving himself, and he’s drawn to the Agency hoping to travel back in time to untangle his troubled childhood and his recently imploded marriage. Jade has no interest in the Agency at all, because there’s no way people are literally time traveling, right? Jade’s present is challenging enough, with her spirited, increasingly bad-tempered daughter and a deeply buried secret too painful for words.
As Anna, Teddy, and Jade’s paths converge, the question of just how legitimate the Agency’s ventures into the past are becomes a mysterious, provocative, tantalising, and even heart-wrenching one to parse—but there is no denying that the ripple effects through all three of their lives are very, very real …
Format 544 pages, Hardcover
Published August 4, 2026 by Berkley
ISBN 9780593820339 (ISBN10: 0593820339)
About the Author
Jaclyn Moriarty is an Australian writer of young adult literature.
She studied English at the University of Sydney, and law at Yale University and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD.
She is the younger sister of Liane Moriarty. She was previously married to Canadian writer Colin McAdam, and has a son, Charlie. She currently lives in Sydney.
My Thoughts
This novel follows Anna and her daughter Nicola, and the bewildered Teddy. It's also the story of Jade and her daughter Holly, whose lives keep intertwining with Anna's in ways that slowly come together over the course of the book.
At the center of it all is a mysterious Time Travel Agency hidden away in Australia. No one's quite sure what goes on there – some people doubt it even exists, dismissing it as an urban legend. Anna ends up employed there, working among a genuinely eccentric cast of coworkers. Meanwhile, Nicola falls in with a new group of friends and starts getting into trouble as she tries to fit in, while in a parallel thread, Jade's daughter Holly has been facing accusations of bullying within her own new friend group. At the agency, Anna meets a customer named Teddy, whose marriage has fallen apart and who's been using sessions there to try to understand where it went wrong – and Anna finds herself drawn to him.
For much of the book, I struggled with the writing style. It's choppy, rushed, and often disjointed, and the plot itself leans outrageous and loosely stitched together – there were stretches where I just felt bored. The story is pretty farcical and ridiculous at times, and while it's clearly written with humor, which I did appreciate, it's not something you can take too seriously.
Five words: preprosterous, quirky, mind-bending, mysterious, predictable
Buy Now:
My final word: My bigger issue is that when the prose is this stilted, the story itself needs to carry the weight – the writing can't lean on lyrical language to pull you through, so it just becomes the vehicle getting you from point A to point B. That means the story needs to be good enough to justify the ride, and for me, this one was a bumpy one.
Still, there's enough inventive, humorous energy here that I didn't regret finishing it. I just wished the execution had matched the ambition of the premise.
Trigger Warnings:
Adultery, bullying
My Rating:
The Cerebral Girl is a middle-aged blogger just digging her way out from under a mountain of books in the deep south of Florida.
I received a copy of this book to review through BookBrowse and the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not financially compensated in any way, and the opinions expressed are my own and based on my observations while reading this novel. The book that I received was an uncorrected proof, and quotes could differ from the final release.
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