This is a nice story with a mix of time travel and romance.
It does leave you wondering how anyone could be so accepting of being told the truth about time travel and believing them.
Hence the 3 stars.

Time travel and temporal paradoxes are trending in today’s speculative fiction works. This story fits nicely into that realm, but the narrative sets its own unique path. The real themes of this book include the importance and power of introspection, relationships and love. The author has an agenda and points to make. Essentially, self knowledge will teach us the importance of community, but even beyond such a revelation is the realization that love exerts a power over us that will not be denied. Also, there’s another truth, destiny will have its way.

In the not too distant future time travel is discovered. Fortunately, or perhaps because the universe deems that only a species that has reached a certain critical level of awareness, humanity knows that with this knowledge comes equivalent responsibility.

Benjamin has reached the level of time travel ambassador with years of training behind him. He is sent on a mission to the past, mostly to observe and try to understand events. But his placement is botched because of an accident among those who were to deliver him. He has to be placed somewhere while things are straightened out and he can be extracted. Don’t tamper, don’t get involved, avoid creating any temporal ‘waves.’ Just keep a very low profile.

But destiny will not be denied. At a restaurant he meets a waitress, Mari, who will cause havoc with Ben’s intensions and create more like a tsunami in the temporal fabric. It’s a case of Love versus Universal Order.

From this point Mari becomes an integral part of the story and her life turns out to be somewhat more involved and complex than even Ben’s.

Sorry for this short and sweet review. I will be honest and say this book took me a while to get into. The prose is okay but a little unusual. I was confused for the first eight or so chapters. I won't explain why, because I don't know how to explain it really. I am very picky when it comes to an authors writing style. If it doesn't flow for me, I will usually DNF it. But since this an atypical read for me anyway, I strode ahead.

The book in itself is unusual since it deals with time travel and aliens. For the most part the romance was good, but I found it hard to concentrate due to the writing style. I can't say I loved it or hate it. It is one of those that sit in between for me. It may be better for someone else, just not my usual.

This tale of a time traveller coming back to a little way in our future is an understated romance, nicely set in Australia. The writing style is light and digestible and some nice gadgetry is described. In particular I am not used to seeing time manipulation gadgetry on a small scale, like today's IOT (which they don't appear to use in the future) with a healing device that can put a person's injured ankle in another time stream so it can use weeks to heal there and a few hours here.

We also get the explanation that once time meddling exists, there is no benefit to one planet's race going back in time to destroy another planet's race before it had found time travel; as a third race would notice and do the same to the first race. Er... I don't think that would work. If race A destroyed the race B, race C would not remember they had existed. The author uses this to explain that everyone has to try to get along. The end has an obligatory time twist.

While I like a lot of the content, the action consists of a few moments of driving, and otherwise it's watching news, having conversation, hiding information and sharing personal stories. I don't see what makes a guy with absolutely no sense of humour attractive to the modern lady, unless of course the average Aussie bloke has even less? She reads and he doesn't and they can't hold a conversation about books. He's not familiar with much of her culture and doesn't offer anything about himself.

Some strong language occurs, but otherwise the tale is suitable for mature teens. I would have liked the story better if the narrator had made himself useful - to anyone - but he's just an observer.
I read an e-ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.