Although the first section felt manic and uneven as Green hurtled through time, the second point of view offered lovely perspective on human connections and duty to each other.

Green is just an ordinary young guy, dancing, drinking, living it up. But something's off: he's started hurtling through time, and he can't stop, which means he can't hold onto relationships or grasp his present before he's off again.

Zada is a scientist from the future who becomes aware of Green's problem and seeks to help him. But doing so may require her to jump into Green's timeline, and she knows that there's no assurance she'll ever get back to her own original time again.

A meeting of the two characters could alter their lives forever.

I had significant difficulty getting through the initial portion of this book. Green's party-guy, train-of-thought-spewing, reactive personality made it tough for me to follow what he was trying to express and tough to care about him as a character. The early scenes felt zany and disjointed, even without the time travel element. I was very close to abandoning the book.

But I'm glad I stuck with it. The calm and thoughtful perspective offered by Zada's later point of view made for a far more cohesive story--and that's saying something, as the novel is, after all, a time-jumping frenzy in a futuristic setting.

It's unclear whether the book's having been written by two authors accounts for some of this drastic split.

Alternative perspectives later in the book (family, friends, and Zada) served up a surprisingly vulnerable, sympathetic Green that was not evident to me in the early portion of the book.

The story centers around Green's activities, but because of the shift in point of view away from his own, he largely drops out of the plot and the story takes off without him. The off-screen, forward-thinking future version of Green didn't jibe with the early image of him for me, but his unexpected, spot-on predictions and savvy intuition allow for the resources for the most interesting portion of the story to occur in the future, as a crack team attempts to understand how to send Zada back to meet him in time.

I received a prepublication edition of this title courtesy of NetGalley and John Hunt Publishing: Cosmic Egg Books.

Important things you need to know about the book:

Pace: The pacing of Secondhand Daylight was medium-paced. While the medium pace worked during sections of the book, the book needed more speed to the storyline-well, at least to Zada’s. There is lag during the book, and I attribute it to the book just plodding along.

Trigger/Content Warning: There are no trigger warnings in Secondhand Daylight.

Sexual Content: There is sexual content in Secondhand Daylight. But it is not graphic. The authors do not go into detail and use the fade to black at the end of one chapter and begin the next chapter the next day.

Language: There is moderate swearing in Secondhand Daylight.

Setting: Secondhand Daylight is set in Australia—past, present, and future.

Tropes: Artificial Intelligence, Dystopian, Time Travel

Age Range: I recommend Secondhand Daylight to anyone over 16.

Plot Synopsis (as spoiler-free as I can get):

John Green is in a problem. One night, in the late 90s, he started traveling through time. At first, it was a few days, then expanded to a few weeks. Soon, he was missing months, years, and ultimately decades. He is desperate to stop his uncontrollable journey through time.

Zada took her job knowing that she would eventually be doing the impossible, going back in time to help the company’s founder, John Green, stop time traveling. This is a one-way journey, with Zada stuck in the past once she figures out why John is time-traveling. But finding John before he travels is proving more complicated than she thought, and Zada isn’t sure she can fix his issue. Can Zada stop John from time traveling, or will her journey be for naught?

Main Characters

John Green: I had a tough time connecting to John’s character. But, I chalked that up to his constant confusion over his time traveling.

Zada: Like John, I had a tough time connecting with Zada. But, and I stress this, it was because of her personality. She wasn’t very likable. She had a massive chip on her shoulder, and it showed. But, she was the person to at least attempt to get the job done (reset John).

My review:

When I downloaded Secondhand Daylight, I did it on a whim. That is something other than what I usually do when considering a book to review. I have learned that I either usually love on whim books or I am meh about them. In this case, I was “meh” about Secondhand Daylight.

I had issues following the storyline of the book. It was choppy, and the timeline was all over the place. I found myself reading and rereading paragraphs and chapters. There was a point where I was going to DNF, but I decided to keep reading.

The time travel storylines were interesting. I wish the authors had explained why John was jumping forward in time sooner in the book. I also worried about paradoxes. The only thing that made sense about the time travel storylines was John and Zada missing each other.

The end of Secondhand Daylight was OK. I liked how the authors wrapped up the time travel storyline. The very end of the book did make me think. It was who was involved and the ages that piqued my interest. I would have liked it better if the authors had started with the book’s last page and built on it.

Many thanks to John Hunt Publishing, Cosmic Egg Books, NetGalley, Eugen Bacon, and Andrew Hook for allowing me to read and review this ARC of Secondhand Daylight. All opinions stated in this review are mine.

I found the premise of the book intriguing, but struggled with the writing style. The dialogue sounded strange and clunky. And, just like the very two dimensional protagonist himself jumps ahead in time, his thoughts seemed to jump around a lot; I often went back a few lines to find what I might have missed and couldn't.

The premise of this book, two people time traveling in opposite directions and trying to cross paths is fantastic. The future world that Bacon and Hook imagine is very intriguing. I think the characters are mostly well developed but I ultimately didn't feel that connected to Green or Zada. I think where this book lost me was the fact that it was stream of consciousness so it was at times very difficult to follow what was happening. While I think that was a really interesting choice for a science fiction novel, it definitely caught me off guard and took me a while to get into the flow of the story. This particular novel might not have been one of my tops but I am very interested in reading more from both authors because I think they have a lot of great ideas that push the boundary of science fiction writing.

Thank you to NetGalley and John Hunt Publishing for the opportunity to read and review this ARC!

Unfortunately I had to DNF this book. I just couldn't get wrapped up in it the way I prefer.

Thank you so much for allowing me to read and review your titles. I really not the opportunity!

I do appreciate it and continue to review books that I get the chance to read.
Thanks again!

Second Hand Daylight is a speculative fiction novel by Eugen Bacon and Andrew Hook starring two characters, Green and Zada, whose lives seem to be worlds apart yet so near. The story starts out with Green, a 27year-old male with a troubled childhood. His life changes one night at one of his favourite hangout spots. For someone with zero ambition like Green and a zeal for life, he has what one would call a future.

‘’My life flashed before my eyes’’ would be an understatement for Green who at a sudden flash of light on the dance floor had a near death experience that started pushing him into the future. After that weird night of meeting his ‘’possible girl’’ his life ceased to be normal. He starts time jumping unknowingly. He would wake up tomorrow and it would already be next week, next month, two or three years into the future.

Time travel is supposed to be fun, or at least an adventure, but for Green it was torture as he failed to maintain relationships with his family and best friend. This led him to lose his job and shelter, his childhood home. The only silver -lining in this is he some-how got compensated for it and had the money from that settlement double and found himself a millionaire. His way off into the future and starts ‘’Social Boxing’’ about his predicament hoping to find some sort of help in an attempt to grab the sheets of time. There is a little glimmer of hope when someone actually genuinely responds.

Before that happens his pushed into the future where he is a business mogul and owns a team who specialise in investigating his time jumps. He is told that the team sent a young woman named Zada to find Green and stabilise his time jumps. Future Green wonders how and why someone would risk going into the past to save his past self, leaving all they know behind without the possibility of getting back.

Zada, the opposite of Green, a woman full of zeal and ambition seemingly ahead of her time and bored leaves in search of Green from the past. She fails at first in her attempts but still meets the people who cared about Green, who lived as though he was dead when he was still alive due to not knowing what was going on in their friends and sons life. Just as she is about to give up searching for Green, she visits the one place she thought she would find him, and then it happens, the opening scene is the end. She finds out it was her all along, she was the one who had de-stabilised Green’s time jumps, and it was happening in a loop, she in that moment before she loses him decides to make things right and re-sets the Tessaract.

I enjoyed reading this time travel story. It has a modern touch, punchy, edgy, adventurous, and zesty. The two authors gave us a fresh approach by bringing the two stories together. We are always told that in order to have a future we must look into the past. For answers etc and Zada in this sense, found her future in the past and almost completely felt wholesome.

The story kept me lingering and wanting more. Though I have never time travelled I found the story relatable. We may not time jump but we do travel in our thoughts and dreams, we even go through events that seem familiar to us. The mystery is always in the questions, ‘’Have I been here?’’, ‘’Why do I feel like I have done this before?’’, ‘’Why do I feel like I know this person?’’ We all at one point feel like we are drifting through life like Green, watching it pass by and live around people like Zada who just cruise through it. We all compare the progress of other people’s lives to ours, as if they are in some kind of time jump and we are stagnant and out of touch with them. I learned that in life we must learn to check up on our loved one’s and not take them for granted. It took Green a few time jumps to realise the importance of relationships.

I found no negative aspects in this book and in the way this story was told, my only complaint is that it ended. This book was well-edited and made for smooth reading, I recommend this book to an adult audience as it contains certain scenes of an adult nature. I give it a rating of 5 out of 5 stars.

I really love the premise of this book and had very high hopes. However, I found it hard to follow. Green is unknowingly jumping forward in time which makes the timeline of the book very difficult to track. I spent so much time and energy trying to fit everything together that I didn’t really care about the characters or what happened to them.

Confusion from the beginning. I was not really getting the story at allll
Then I thought I was getting it but Couldn't really follow the flow of thought. So a dnf for me

Nice premise with mixed execution. I liked this overall, but it is uneven, and some readers may find it difficult to follow at times. I'm not sure if this had the wrong editor or if it's just me. I'm sure some readers will be more enthusiastic than I.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

DNF at 25%

Secondhand Daylight tells about a man who finds himself jumping ahead in time every now and then without realizing it.

It’s an interesting story concept, but I really couldn’t follow it because of its writing. Just like the protagonist, it jumps ahead at thoughts so quickly you don’t realize he was talking about a new topic that may or may not be related to the previous scene. The first time travel scene was confusing at best. There’s also a shift in writing style that changes often enough that you know there are two distinct authors. The protagonist is both casual and crass and eloquent and poetic but at distinctly different times. I also found that the people around him aren’t reacting like how normal humans react to things. Specifically, his supervisor and former close friend was more concerned on wasted barbecue than on his friend and employee who was technically missing for a week. I could chalk it up as a weird situation of them thinking that the protagonist was a drug user (still a bit weak, they should still be concerned about the person!). But then when he shows up to his dad’s wedding 6 months after the event—already that should be a huge warning sign to the dad, even if they’re estranged—it was merely shrugged off.

Overall, it has great potential but the writing is all over the place.

This was an interesting take on time travel. The main character John Green is being thrown randomly and involuntarily forward in time which obviously messes with his life and social relationships on top of being very disorienting and confusing.
Then we have Zara who is traveling back in time from the future to find John Green.
The characters are very likable and it is enjoyable to follow along with them.
The book itself was at times hard to follow and the plot a little harder to get into as it tended to be confusing for the reader as much as the main character.
Overall it was an interesting premise and thought provoking but maybe not for someone that likes more plot driven, exciting type of fiction.

This novel follows Green who is making time jumps into the future, beginning in the early 1990s. What starts as short jumps soon becomes out of control with each jump being longer in time. Somehow a group is formed to find a way to help control his jumps and Zada begins traveling back in time to help him. I found the plot idea interesting and would have appreciated more insight into how the logistics of his life are handled between jumps. The reader sees him jump to a future where he has an AI directing an organization designed to save Green, but the reader is left guessing how that all works, and that is frequently the interesting part of scifi - the construct. The narrative occasionally dwells on rather lengthy sports descriptions of cricket and footy which I, having no background or interest in, skipped over. Recommendation: Interesting premise I would have liked to see more fully developed, but I left feeling rather unsatisfied.

This is a very clever book, something that you do not entirely expect. But I did have a hard time reading it, as the writing style feels like a jumble of words and thoughts all pushed out together. That may well be the point, but that did make it harder to read and enjoy, and took me twice as long as it probably should have. An interesting concept, but I just found the delivery difficult.

Great concept, not so great execution. The writing jumped around without any real detail. The main character was easy to dislike and the depth of the other characters was absent. There was no character connection between the reader and the story. The intrigue of the ending is the only thing that kept me reading, and it was sadly predictable. The story reads as more of an outline.