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I received this book for free from Bookish First in exchange for an honest review. If you've read my other reviews, you'll know that if it's bad, I'll say so, regardless of how I received the book.

I was pleasantly surprised by another Bookish First novel. The Dream Daughter by Diane Chamberlain has a women’s fiction style cover and a mushy romance premise. And it has time travel!

For a quick overview, during Carly’s first day working as a physical therapist she was assigned a seemingly depressed patient, Hunter. Hunter came with a mystery and sung along with the first ever radio play of a “new” Beatles song. Fast forward, and Hunter is married to Carly’s sister, and Carly is newly widowed and pregnant. Carly’s unborn baby is diagnosed with a heart defect that’s untreatable in North Carolina in 1970. Luckily, Hunter is a time traveler from 2018, and there is a hospital in New York City that’s doing trials on exactly the treatment required.

The Dream Daughter is the kind of story Hallmark will make into a movie. It’s a sweet, enjoyable read. Even the “scary” moments aren’t that scary. It’s hard to be scared when they are traveling to our current time, and we know September 11 happened, and in vitro surgery. It’s a Hallmark-style story, so I’m not sure it’s really a spoiler to say it’ll all end well.

While I couldn’t relate to any of the characters, I appreciate Carly not being the standard women’s literature female, dependent on others. She perhaps adapts to the 21st century and New York City (versus rural beachside North Carolina) a little too easily, but it makes the story more enjoyable.

I’m intentionally skipping over the science of time travel because the book skips it too. Hunter explains the process, but he doesn’t seem to really understand the how, and because this is a women’s fiction novel, not science fiction the story doesn’t need it. A potential weakness is the amount of detail around 9/11. It’s a very US-centric story, and that part probably won’t resonate as much with international audiences.

The Dream Daughter is a sweet story. Not as challenging as I hoped, but enjoyable none the less.

Photo by Artem Bali on Unsplash