"The moon represents my heart" by Pim Wangtechawat

An audio book

Joshua (raised in Hong Kong's Walled City, parents ran a restaurant) and wife Lilly (Liverpool, of Chinese descent) have twins Eva and Tommy. They can travel back in time though their skills are limited - Joshua can only return to Hong Kong, and they can only travel for a day without damage. If time-travellers hold hands, there’s a better chance that they can stay together. If they’re drawn to particular times/places perhaps there’s something to learn there.

In 1972 when the twins are 8 they travel for the first time as a family - to see Bruce Lee. When the twins are 12, the parents go to the Victorian Age and don't return. An aunt (Ama) (who didn't know about the time-travelling) looks after the children.

Tommy meets Crystelle and others at university in London. He meets Peggy who living through World War 2 in London. He has to decide whether to warn her of dangers ahead. When he jumps back to people, he wonders whether they're been told the future by an older him. After a non-time-traveller breaks up with a lover, they wonder whether they’ll later see a younger version of the lover.

The story jumps forwards and backwards, which doesn't help immersion.

Other reviews

• goodreads
• Mike Maggio (Here, we have a family of time-travelers but nothing to convince us of the reality of their universe. The reader is simply left to believe. Why is Joshua capable of time-travel? And how did he meet a woman with the exact same gift? It seems haphazard, unless, of course, it’s all just a metaphor for the notion that the search for one’s past is a sort of time-travel. However, the reader (this one, anyway) isn’t convinced that any of these circumstances are other than happenstance ... The second problem is that Wangtechawat fails to heed the “show, don’t tell” paradigm underpinning good fiction. As a result, the writing is bland, the dialogue mundane, and the overall effect disappointing)
• Archita Mittra (a series of nonlinear vignettes that often morphs into free verse ... When it comes to time travel, there’s a sure surfeit of narratives out there. Obsessing over past mistakes, longing for second chances, and wishing to go back in time and do things differ­ently make for stories that resonate with many people. ... the emotional beats didn’t quite land for me – partly because I’ve already encountered similar stories and partly because of the prose style. Wangtechawat’s use of language is interesting: her sentences are mostly shorn of ornamentation, clean and simple, telling the reader everything they need to know. It makes for a lucid and breezy read, and at times, the line breaks are structured to mirror the cadence of poetry, but I didn’t find the result to be as poignant as perhaps intended. The text aspires to a certain literary quality, focusing more on the interiority of the characters rather than on the period settings, but its simplicity and what feels like a lack of detail might prevent the reader from becoming fully invested in the narrative. )