Blog tour: Running Behind Time

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Welcome to the blog tour for Running Behind Time by Jan Turk Petrie.

About the book…

It’s the Summer of 1982, and Beth Sawyer is thrilled to have landed the title role in a play. It may only be in a fringe theatre in Shepherd’s Bush, but it’s the start she’s always dreamed of.  

It’s the Summer of 2020, amid the global pandemic, Tom Brookes is furloughed. Unable to face lockdown in a tiny city flat, he moves back to his mother’s cottage in the sleepy Cotswold village of Stoatsfield-under-Ridge. 

Neither of them expects an everyday train journey to throw their normal lives so spectacularly off-course.  

This is the story of an extraordinary encounter between two people who should never have met. 

About the author…

Jan Turk Petrie lives in the Cotswolds area of England. She is the proud author of the future-world, fast-paced thriller series The Eldísvík Trilogy.

A former English teacher with an MA in creative writing from the University of Gloucestershire, Jan has also written numerous, prize-winning short stories.

My impressions…

How did this book end up in my hands? I was gifted a copy of the book so that I could join this blog tour.

Was it a page-turner? As it’s always the case with dual timeline narratives, I couldn’t read fast enough. This, combined with having two main characters that I started to care for, made it hard for me to put the book down when I needed to get on with my day, or sleep!

Did the book meet my expectations? I was expecting more details about the technicalities of time travel but I’m glad to say that the author didn’t delve in explanations that I would have probably found hard to understand. Time travel is an element of the story but the characters, with their lives and feelings, are the focus of the narrative. I found it interesting to see how different the 1982 reality was from the 2020 reality. Less than 40 years apart, and yet a lot has changed. It was also strange (in a good way) to read about people living in these pandemic times. I mean, sometimes I feel like I could easily be Beth, struggling to make sense of this new world. Running Behind Time was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Three words to describe it. Intriguing. Contemporary. Relatable.

Do I like the cover? It is sadly not one of my favourite covers. Or, to be precise, I like the artwork in itself but it suggests - to me at least - a book that is more about science than feelings, while I found it to be the other way around.

Have I read any other books by the same author? I haven’t yet read any of her other novels but I have had the pleasure to host a Q&A with the author last year, when The Truth in a Lie was published.

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