Retro

by Jessica M. Goldstein

Ash is a failed actress who is done trying to ‘make’ something of her life. Until a golden opportunity drops in her a job at Retro, an agency who organise trips into the past for the ultra-wealthy.

Energised by her new role, Ash throws herself into leading bachelorette parties in the Old West, birthday parties at Woodstock and a situationship with a hard-drinking detective from 1937. But as time goes on, it becomes clear that Retro’s shadowy founder Ro has terrifying designs for the company’s future – and for the part Ash herself can play in it.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Fantasy, Contemporary, Romance, Speculative Fiction

407 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 23, 2026

Reviews

[Caz (Underlined) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review of advance
Copy received from
NetGalley



Retro by Jessica M. Goldstein is a contemporary, character-driven story that focuses more on memory, identity, and emotional reflection than on a fast-moving plot. It follows characters who are looking back at their past choices while trying to figure out where they stand in the present.


I liked the idea behind the book and the way it explores nostalgia and how the past shapes people, but I didn’t fully connect with it. The story felt quite introspective, and at times that made it hard for me to stay emotionally invested in the characters or their journeys.


That said, the writing is strong and very atmospheric. Jessica M. Goldstein does a good job of capturing emotional shifts and the subtle dynamics between people. There are moments that feel thoughtful and well observed, especially when it comes to relationships and personal reflection.


Even though it didn’t completely work for me, I can see what it was aiming for. Readers who enjoy slower, reflective literary fiction focused on character and emotion would probably appreciate it more than I did.

Thank you NetGalley, Jessica M. Goldstein and Ballantine Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Publishing date: June 25th 2026

[Nicole Auerbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not want this book to end, which is how I know I had to give it five stars.

It’s just such a rich story filled with three-dimensional characters and workplace dynamics that feel so true to life. I loved our flawed-yet-relatable protagonist, Ash, and I was always rooting for her and her friends. The times/places they visited in the past were both vivid and fascinating. Plot twists kept me on my toes. The time-travel “science” was easy to digest, and it never distracted from the real story — which was one of a human being wondering what life is really supposed to be about. What are memories worth? What value do we really provide to one another? How do we leave an imprint on this world?

Blown away by this debut novel. Jessica Goldstein is a star.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

[Patrick Casebeer]

Thank you Ballantine Books and Net Galley for the ARC!

Well I’m not sure how to rate this honestly. The concept is really unique, and the overall story was interesting. But this was like a buffet of story lines. A lot of different things, none of them really cooked that great, and when you’re done you realize you filled up on enough that you’re full but not really satisfied.

First, there seemed to be a lot of focus on colors. Liftoff gold was more of a main character than Ash it seemed and I’m not sure why.

There wasn’t enough of the story dealing with the trips, I wanted more of that.

So many story lines that felt just added to be added, not fully fleshed out. Even the overall story. So she had a famous movie star friend. Ok. They wrote a script that might be a movie. Ok. She had an unfortunate run in with a movie executive. Ok. She had a relationship with a man in the past. Ok. There was an influencer that had some health issues after time traveling. Ok. She was having health issues. Ok. Even the end, she got in the tomorrow train. Ok. I don’t think many of these went anywhere, or were expanded on enough.

And the ending. Cmon. I get letting the reader sometimes decide or come up with how they interpret the ending but it felt lazy. What happened to Ash? What happened to Jane? What happened to Ro? What happened to Retro? Did others remember her again?

Also, and this bothered me a bit, if she was going to stay in the past but needed to leave the embassy for other explorers what was to stop her from telling them what happened, or violently taking their pastports to get back and if they go back to the same point in time and place wouldn’t it be Ash’s past anyway?

This was probably a 2 star book but bc I love time travel and this was a new concept to me I was forgiving. But it could use a liftoff gold coating to make it better.

[Amber Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this.

In a world where time travel is available to the wealthy, Ash sees an ad that Retro is hiring and gets a job. She and her coworkers spend their days off time traveling for fun, and she starts a fling with a man from the 1930s and also her present-day coworker. Meanwhile the billionaire CEO has taken a special interest in her, and there is an underlying tension that something isn’t quite right at the company.

Honestly this has a little bit of everything— romance, sci-fi, historical fiction.

I hope the author writes more books because I will read them!

[Angelica Star]

Just can’t read about millennials without wanting to kms sorry

[Alyssa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for inviting me to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I hate to say it, but this book was just boring to me. There was SO much happening throughout the book, it felt all over the place. There were way too many side characters to keep up with. The fact that I can say I was bored with all of that is kind of sad. I was just rushing to finish it.

First we started with the long build up of Ash being down on life to eventually her getting the job to work for Retro. We learned about the job and started sending her to travel with people. I know the story needs to be set up, but it took too long in my opinion. It shouldn’t take that long to set up the premise. Then we went back and forth jumping around all over different timelines, to worrying about who Ash was going to end up with, and so much more.

I didn’t care for her relationship with Frank. I loved Miles. If he was in the book more it would have been better. I didn’t really like the nickname dollface, but it wasn’t a huge deal. At least he was an interesting character. I feel like it focused more on Frank’s relationship than with Miles, so despite me liking Miles more, the relationship seemed forced. I didn’t feel that much chemistry, between either couple to be honest. I feel like I was more told than shown. And she was playing both guys, which I thought was an interesting choice. I know it is in different periods of time, but she was still dating two people at one time basically. Miles did know about it, but still.

I liked Luca as well. His character made me laugh. I enjoyed Jane too! She really picked up for me at the end.

I didn’t really care to follow Ash. There was nothing really about her character that made me want to root for her. Some things rubbed me the wrong way, like the one scene where she said who cares if women feel like a sex object or invisible, because it isn’t that important. What a wild thing to say. I know she was talking about herself in that case, but still. Plus, I just didn’t feel very connected to her.

I thought it was good that it talked about the dangers of time travel and thought it was unique how it messed with people’s head, whether they were the ones to time travel or not.

It finally started to get good at about the 20% mark.

Ro was crazy, and it was so scary to see what he was capable of. You had to suspend your disbelief with some of his theories and practices, but that is okay.

I was so excited to finally be engaged in the rest of the book. Then boom. It just ended. No conclusion, no answers, nothing. Now I don’t always mind an open ending. Sometimes it makes sense for the story. This one was just frustrating! Not only are there a lot of characters stories that are left open ended that interacted with Ash, but we don’t even find out what happens to her! Which makes me so upset. I guess in a way it is cool for the author to leave it up to the reader to decide what happens, and I have what I think does, but to go through that whole book and build up to the end, only for it to end super abruptly, really sucked. It just made it feel like everything we went through while reading was kind of pointless. Also, Ash’s conflict at the end of the book didn’t last for very long. Not that I necessarily wanted to read more of her time there, but still. I was so panicked for her and what she was going through, only for the next page practically it started to get resolved.

This book had a really cool concept. Being able to take a train to a random point in time just willy-nilly sounds like it would be really fun to read about! This one just did not work for me at all.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read Retro as a buddy read and really wanted it to click for me, but overall it fell short of my expectations.

Jessica Goldstein sets up an intriguing premise and a very specific atmosphere, but the pacing dragged for a large portion of the book. It felt like the story could have been significantly tighter, and I often found myself waiting for the plot to truly move. There’s a lot of setting and scene detail layered in, and while I can see what it was trying to establish, much of it didn’t feel essential to my experience as a reader.

The strongest element for me was Ash. Her character development is solid, and I appreciated watching her evolve from the moment she lands the job at Retro through everything that follows. That said, I wanted more depth and sharper emotional payoff. A lot happens across the timeline, and while the slow build is clearly intentional, the eventual delivery didn’t hit as hard as I expected.

It wasn’t until around the last 20% that I felt fully engaged, and by then I was wishing the earlier sections had been trimmed or given a stronger sense of forward momentum.

Thank you to NetGalley, Jessica Goldstein, and Ballantine Books for the advanced copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own and shared voluntarily.

[Abigail E · Rating 3 out of 5]

••• ARC/ALC REVIEW •••
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 (3.25 stars)
Do I recommend: I liked it! So really your call.
***Available now***

I love a good time travel story, and this one had an excellent premise. I liked it but unfortunately I felt like I didn’t know where to focus, so it’s landing at 3.25 (positive!) stars from me.

Ash lands a job at Retro, a luxury time travel agency (why go on a normal vacation when you can go BACK IN TIME?!). She soon realizes that time travel isn’t as simple as everyone has been led to believe.

This really had a lot of fun elements and moments! I liked the premise, appreciated the social commentary (spoiler alert - billionaires and men are the worst BUT YOU ALREADY KNEW THAT, YOU BEAUTIFUL GENIUS), and enjoyed stepping into the world of time travel.

Ultimately I think this book had too many elements to focus on (Her friend! Her screenplay! Her ex! Her past! Her mom! Her love interest(s)! Her friends!) that I simply lost focus. I was reeled back in at the last 10% or so, at which point I was like OKAY NOW WE HAVE A BOOK I REALLY WANT TO READ (cue Jojo singing Too Little, Too Late).

Anyway, it was a good time and I’m not mad I read it but I also will forget everything that happened and won’t use time travel to read it again for the first time, know what I mean?!

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was really different and I loved the dose of magical realism. Juicy reading about rich people wanting to time travel and seeing the potential fallout - feels like a future that could be not too far away?

[Rhode PVD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely well written but not all it could be: I was swept in immediately by the reality of the characters, places, the heroine’s inner thoughts, the way people behave. This realism grounded the fantasy of the setting and worked beautifully until close to the end when the story shifted in a way that didn’t make sense for the characters nor the plot but did make sense for the author’s overarching thesis. I read books for character driven stories, so this was a disappointment.

You also have to overlook a massive plot hole throughout which is if the CEO can go back and forth in time, which he could use to make himself the richest man in the world without the hard work of building a whole company, why is he bothering with building that company? He is little more than a (deftly done) caracature, so we’ll never know.

Reader warnings: There’s a lot of drinking and some smoking in this book, a memory of a past SA, and it ends as a cliffhanger (this is not intended as a series, it’s a deliberate unresolved cliff.)

[Madison F.]

This sounds so intriguing but I couldn't get into it. Might try again eventually. This is an arc and the book releases next week.

[Geonn Cannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique version of a time travel tale... a bit heavy on the exposition at the beginning, and weirdly casual about the actual traveling into the past. But a quite enjoyable story overall.

[Chelsea Knowles · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

Retro follows Ash who desperately wants to be an actress but it hasn’t worked out and she has given up when she sees an ad for Retro. Retro is a company that discovered time travel and hires time travels agents as guides to lead wealthy people on tours to the past. They travel to historic events in American history on the Retro Metro and the guides help the wealthy to blend in with the time period and locals. Ash is soon hired by Retro as with her acting background she is the perfect fit to host bachelorette parties in the Old West and take Wall Street men to the Gold Rush. Ash is having the time of her life at Retro as the agents get to time travel wherever they want when they are not hosting tours. Ash gets to go to Woodstock and even starts a relationship with a man in 1937. The time travel agents are told there are no problems with time travel and that the timeline is stable but Ash starts to have glitches in her memory and her relationships in the present are not what they once where. Ash begins to suspect something is wrong despite Retro claiming the timeline is stable and she wonders if it’s safe to continue time travelling and escaping reality.

I really loved this novel and I’m giving this five stars. It was absolutely amazing and I loved every second. I love media about time travel and I love what this book did with the time travel. The science behind time travel is not really explained in this book and it’s very much vibes based as the characters time travel essentially by special trains. The time travel by Retro is exclusive to American history and I just found this whole book fascinating. I enjoyed following Ash as a main character and experiencing the different places with her. I do tend to love historical settings so I really liked the places in America that Ash traveled to especially 1937 where she met Frank. There is a twist in this book that shocked me and I really liked it. This also felt very realistic to me because if time travel was real, wealthy people would definitely treat it like they do in this book. They treat it as normal and forget how amazing it actually is. The wealthy people treat it as if it is a fun day out when in reality each time period they travel to is full of hardship which Ash experiences when she travels to the 1800s.

There are some interesting things regarding the impact of time travel that I found really intriguing and made me question if/how time travel could ever work with the impact it has on the real people in the past with the time travel agents having actual relationships with them. This book also considers the norms of each time period and discusses how people behave differently, for example, the way some people in the past would be deemed racist/misogynistic today. This book is absolute perfection and I had the best time reading this. It’s been over a week since I finished this and I’m still thinking about it. This is definitely one of my top reads of the year and I will be recommending this to everyone I know.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I’m a sucker for time travel stories (like, I have a GR shelf devoted to them!), so I snapped this one up pretty quickly. It’s set at an indeterminate point in the future, where we’ve somehow invented time travel tourism. People take these conveyers (it’s not a train! They repeat this point over and over that it’s NOT the same as a train) on different lines into the past. You can go back pretty far - Columbus’s landing maybe? I forget if there’s a genuine stopping point. But there are limitations - you can only travel backwards, and only within the US (so no traveling to like, Pompeii or the first Olympics, or whatever). Other than that, it’s pretty much wide open - there aren’t any spots that have to be avoided. There’s talk of a “tomorrow train,” that never really gets off the ground, because traveling to the fast involves moving to a fixed point on the timeline, while traveling to the future is obviously much more uncertain. The timeline, as we’re told repeatedly, is resilient. That old chestnut about stepping on a ladybug and causing a catastrophe is wildly egotistical - the truth is that most humans just don’t have that much impact on events. The stock market crashes, Pearl Harbor gets bombed, Kennedy is shot, the towers fall… it all comes to pass just as it always did.

Our protagonist, Ash, is hired as a Time Travel Agent for Retro, which basically means she’s guiding these rich “explorers” (not tourists!) on various trips to places like Woodstock and the old west, and the roaring 20’s. During her new hire happy hour in 1937, Ash is witness to a murder and ends up having to continually travel back to that point on the timeline to be questioned by a private investigator. One of the rules of time travel is that you must cooperate with law enforcement, unless it would blow your cover. Ash is a typical shiftless twenty-something. She never quite made it as an actress, so she’s just shuffled from one dead end job to another. She sees the ad for Retro after being fired from some kind of temp office assistant job, and gets hired pretty much on the spot - her acting skills are an asset of course, but the real asset is the fact that she doesn’t really have any ties in the present. Only child, divorced parents, only a couple of friends (one, Pebbles, is a famous actress whose success Ash has always resented). It doesn’t take long for Ash to get sucked into the world of time travel - you can visit the 90s on your lunch break! She seems to spend almost as much time in the past with her fellow agents as she does leading excursions, and it’s not surprising that they’re all a little unstuck in time.

The concept is so intriguing, and part of me just wants to read about how it all works - there are different departments to ensure historical accuracy (you can’t show up in the 1800s with perfect teeth), and something always seems on the verge of breaking. But the actual plot is extremely slow - just a lot of traveling to the past, marveling at the clear blue skies and clean water and performances at Woodstock, Ash falling for the 30s PI and a dude named Miles who works in Preservation (his job is spectacularly unclear - I think he’s supposed to make sure the timeline does, in fact, stay the same?). And there are hints that all of the agents are discontented and looking for something - Luca, part of Ash’s agent trio, wants to find “the last normal day” so he keeps visiting days right *before* well known tragedies to see if there’s some inexorable *feeling* he can find. So far no luck. But Ash mostly just drifts around not really doing much until about the 75% mark, when some complications arise.

This was definitely a case of being more interested in the world building than the actual plot. I’m completely fascinated by the time travel and the mechanics of making it all work. Ash herself? Kind of a shrug.

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this early review copy.



I enjoyed this and I really liked the writing. I'm excited to see what she publishes next!

But I got a bit antsy in the beginning, because Ash is one of those characters who just sort of lets life happen to her. She doesn't ask questions, she doesn't research, she bluffs her way through. If someone asks her a question, she just shrugs and says "sure" even if she has no idea what they're talking about. Take some ownership of your life!! Make informed choices, PLEASE! The unknown facets of her new job were perhaps meant to add plot tension, but it just annoyed me and made me NOT want to read.

Even more annoying, it quickly becomes clear that Ash is That Special Girl and every man who meets her is instantly, inexplicably, fascinated with her. The Tech Bro head of the company, Ro, is fascinated with her. The mysterious Tech Bro guy who works in the basement, Miles, is fascinated with her. The PI she meets in 1937, Frank, is fascinated with her. Each one of these guys seems to develop an instant fixation. Why? The only men she interacts with who do NOT immediately fall all over themselves for her are gay.

Note: all of this is intentional. Goldstein has a plan.

At some point in the middle, I realized I was actually bored. How can a time travel novel be boring? I don't know. This story had both too much detail, and not enough detail. The things I wanted to know more about were glossed over or ignored, and things that did not feel important to me were described in endless detail. I'm glad I kept reading, though.

Certain things (à la "Chekhov's gun") are mentioned that seemed to have no reason to exist other than to serve as foreshadowing, so I waited with some anticipation to see how that would all come together. It does eventually all come together in the end, and the things that were annoying me play a key role in the plot. I wish Goldstein had found another way to get there, because the end was surprising and satisfying, but it's hard to shake my annoyance at everything I had to wade through before in order to get to that point. But, honestly, I cannot think of another way. All that stuff that came first was necessary. (Well, maybe SOME of the details about her trips could have been removed.)

The ending was open-ended, leaving it up to the reader to decide what happens next. I'm not super fond of that sort of ending, but I know many readers love it. It leaves things open for a sequel, and if that happens, I'm so HERE for it. Despite all my annoyance in the middle of the book, I found the entire thing very satisfying.





words I looked up:
* epistaxis - medical term for a nosebleed
* aprosexia is an abnormal, severe inability to sustain attention or concentrate.
* lambent - giving off a soft, flickering, or gentle glow (I actually knew this one, but I looked it up anyway)
* minacious - threatening or of a menacing character (obvious from context so I really didn't need to look it up)
* red sauce joint - this is a phrase that I've never heard before, but I immediately knew what it meant. I found a reddit thread with a lot of energetic responses saying they'd never heard this phrase before in their lives. Consensus seems to be that it started with food writers (possibly Anthony Bourdain) and spread to social media influencers. I guess it's fair enough for a present day time traveler to use this phrase in 1983 NJ. But no average New Jerseyite in 1983 NJ was using it, I can attest to that!

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Huzzah! Although this is not a perfect piece of speculative fiction, it’s absolutely the book that Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear should have been, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. After failing to make it as an actress, Ash takes a job at a commercial time travel company, Retro, that sells trips into the past to its wealthy customers, complete with add-on experiences (want to play-act at being a damsel in distress in the Wild West? Retro will have you tied to the train tracks with slipknots). Jessica M. Goldstein spends much of Retro simply exploring the world of this company and its excursions, which I felt, on the whole, was a great choice; the premise is so rich, and I’ve read too much speculative fiction that launches into plot without giving itself space to think more carefully. It also allows her to develop Ash’s character more deeply. It slowly becomes apparent that Retro is set in an alternative version of the 2010s rather than in the present-day or the near-future, another clever authorial decision that allows Goldstein to explore how we romanticise the very recent past. Ash was born in 1986 and ends up exploring the early 00s malls of her teens with a nostalgic friend: ‘She wanted to slide into the Photo Booth at the Limited Too and press her cheek right up against Ash’s and leave with sticker sheets of pictures of their faces smushed together in frames of fluorescent flowers.’

On the surface, therefore, Ash looks like another messy millennial, but there’s a specificity to her problems that moved her out of that category for me (and frankly it’s just more interesting reading about somebody who works in time travel than in, for example, content moderation, as in Elaine Castillo’s excellent Moderation, which shares some DNA with this novel). Ash’s history as an actress informs how she relates to Retro, and how she increasingly struggles to feel alive in the present; a birthday trip back to prehistoric Manhattan cements her sense of being out of time, or what the novel calls ‘déjà encore’: ‘A turtle made its leisurely passage along the mucky brim of the water towards a flotilla of water lilies whose pink petals yawned open towards the sun. Ash let her fingers graze the water as a flat, silvery fish flitted past’. Still, she can’t scrub her mind of its accumulation of contemporary references: ‘It looked like… the cover of a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper’. As this suggests, Retro does what Yesteryear promised to do but didn’t: explore why we so desperately want to return to an imagined pre-modern past, and then pick at the ways in which our ideas of that past are just plain wrong (Ash is dismayed to find cowboy tat on sale in mid-nineteenth-century Texas: ‘I guess I just thought we were going back for the real thing… What is all this based on if there isn’t something real somewhere?’) It’s a shame that a promising plot thread that would have let Goldstein explore these themes more thoroughly is introduced in the final few chapters then wrapped up too quickly, but I loved the actual ending.

I received a free proof copy of this novel from the publisher for review.

[Sydney Scarbrough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Retro by Jessica M. Goldstein immediately sucks you in with an unmistakable strength and voice. the main character, Ash, is an archetype for the angst felt almost universally today by late gen z'ers/early millennials (zillennials, anyone? 😉): the dread of dead-end job after dead-end job; having yet to find your passion, or worse — having found it and not achieving success with it; the insurmountable student loans and impossibility of the elusive american dream; the constant barrage of social media and inundation that everyone else your age seems to be making more money, traveling more often, and overall having more fun. when Ash loses yet another job, all of these feelings are magnified. enter: Retro, a time travel agency that allows its wealthy customers to experience history since before humanity as we know it existed, who happens to be hiring.

i loved reading about the expected destinations Ash and her coworkers, as well as guests, would choose to travel — Woodstock, Studio 54, the Wild West — but also the more mundane yet overwhelmingly nostalgic places like an early 2000s mall. this book weaves history into present day seamlessly and effortlessly inspired me to learn more about America's past. it also had me reflecting on experiences of my own that may have seemed small and maybe even insignificant at the time, but that i would go back to if given the chance.

what i think Retro conveys implicitly yet beautifully is the weighing of romanticizing days gone by with enjoying present day. while much of the book is spent on luxurious trips to when (not where!) life was completely different — vast, unpolluted skies, prices so low your head would spin, the freedom living without constant documentation allows — everyone always chooses to come back to the comforts of modern day. there can't be progress without change.

another theme that stood out to me is the promise and perceived infallibility of technology. unfortunately, i don't think there is one technology out there that has not backfired to some degree. while we all can't live without our cellphones and appreciate the connectedness they facilitate, what do we give up or risk losing entirely in the process? the same can be said about cars, flying, microwaves, air conditioning, you name it. nothing is without its drawbacks, unlike the mega-rich tech giant CEOs of these companies would like you to believe. Retro's CEO embodies this wholly, and his particular interest in Ash and deliberate ambiguity about the company adds a suspense and discomfort to what would otherwise be a lighthearted, burning the disco down reading experience.

this would've been 5 stars but there were moments in the middle where the pacing felt a bit slow. i would not be surprised if i come back and revise this to 5 stars after not being able to stop thinking about it the rest of the summer, or beyond. this has a glowing recommendation from me.

thank you to netgalley and ballantine books for an arc copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!

[Jacqie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up to 4.

I think the author wanted Ash to come across as more Gen Z maybe? But she feels firmly millenial to me. She's an out of work admin who used to be an actress, once. In desperation, she fills out an application to Retro and is surprised to be hired. Perhaps the reason is that Ash's self-loathing and lack of center come through in the application, because she's essentially being hired to pretend all the time.

Retro is quite the place! It's got its own trademarked signature color, a rich Liftoff Gold. It's described as Klimt-esque. It has a costume department, a medical bay, dorms (Ash's room is pure 1920's glam), tech repair and a fixer for any time mishaps. What could these mishaps be? The author avoids the butterfly effect entirely: you can pretty much do whatever you want and the timeline won't be affected because most people simply don't matter that much to the timeline.

One of the least believable parts of the book for me is that the Retro time travel technology seems to be purely used for luxury tourism. Ash is a guide for bachelorette parties in 19th century North Dakota who want a cowgirl experience, bachelor parties who want to experience the 1960's Woodstock, men who want to bond with their sons in the unexplored wilderness of America past. One disappointment for me: time travel only went back about 400 years and only to America. People want to party in the Roaring 20's. They want to see Golden Age Hollywood up close. What would you do? What would you want to see?

Ash drinks all the Koolaid that Retro gives her and so we don't really get to see much beyond what she notices. She has a dim feeling that she and the other employees are being kept distracted and busy, but why? She finds she's got a talent for improvisation in crisis situations and that she can slip into alternate personas easily. She's finally found a fit for herself. And it's GRIM, the work world out there, so she very much wants to keep her fun and exciting job.

What I liked most about the book was the vibe of it. One of the characters says that "everyone is nostalgic for something" and the author certainly is able to evoke that feeling. I'm not young anymore and I got nostalgic for the feeling of being young and untethered and open to whatever marvelous things came next.

The characters are nostalgic too. Ash's co-workers want to revisit certain places again and again. One craves the danger of Action Park (look it up, it's worth it). When another feels overly stressed, all she wants to do is hit an early 90's mall, get a pretzel and Orange Julius, and watch the teens who are the age she was in the 90's go by. I get it, for real.

I had my theories about where all this was going. I was only off by a bit!

[Leanne Hale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many thanks to NetGalley and Ballentine for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
4.5 ⭐
This book was such a great surprise hit for me! I noticed this on NetGalley a while back, and even added it to one of my "possibilities" lists but didn't request it. When the publisher offered it to me, I thought, "why not?" I usually enjoy time travel novels when well done, and this sounded intriguing. Most of the reviews I read described this book as fun, and it was. But it was SO much more than that.

Ash is soon to be 30, a talented actress, who, for reasons we learn more about later, has given up her dream and is working a series of dead end jobs that she cares nothing about. Then, sensing an escape, she applies for a job at Retro, a company specializing in luxury time travel trips for the wealthy, founded and run by a Steve Jobs/Elon Musk type enigmatic CEO.

As Ash settles in to this world of luxury, adventure, and escape, it's so fun for the reader to imagine where they might choose to go. Woodstock? The Roaring 20s? Times Square on VJ Day? Or somewhere darker, like the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the September 11th attacks? Where is the ultimate escape, or the most defining moment in history? When was ideal time in this country to experience being alive? Goldstein creates such descriptive moments in time and history for Retro's employees and "explorers" to visit. But then things start to get a lot deeper, and a lot darker.

Just what is actually being sought here? Goldstein begins a conversation about how we seek belonging and comfort, and the potential dangers of nostalgia. One of my favorite sayings is "where you go, there you are", and she puts this on brilliant display here. It becomes evident around halfway through that Goldstein expects more from her readers than to simply want to be entertained by this story, which becomes less of a surprise when you read her authors note (Do NOT read it until completely done with the book!) and learn more about her day job as a journalist. I actually had to look up the definitions of words twice, and I can't remember the last time I had to do that!

This is an excellent debut novel, if just a tad bit longer than necessary, and part of the resolution was a bit too fast and easy for me. Even so, this book impressed the hell out of me, even more so because as with my top book of the year, I feel like it started off as one kind of read, and morphed into something different, and better. I highly recommend this book and truly can't wait to see what else Goldstein has in store for us down the road.

[TBS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars rounded up to 3.5 This book has an intriguing concept -monetized time travel to pivotal cultural and historic destinations run by a very secure and highly secretive corporation, Retro, led by a Steve Jobs/Elon Musk mashup of a messianic enigmatic founder. Its newest employee, Ash is an unmoored unsuccessful former actor who has been fired from a series of dead-end jobs because of her attitude and lack of team spirit. Her life circumstances are even more grueling because her best friend is ascending to the upper stratosphere of stardom. When Ash answered a Retro ad for a time travel agent, her acting background becomes an asset to help shepherd the explorers (aka paying customers) to whatever historical moment they fancy, which can range from the drafting of the constitution, to the wild west era, to Studio 54 and the birth of punk rock, to 9/11. The marketing and commodification of cultural memory is the lifeblood of Retro, even if the science is a little janky; after a while no one seems to care about this anyway, save for the reclusive engineer that folds space and time into experiential bites. It is perfectly safe, management insists, the timeline is resilient. But what about the hallucinations and headaches and ennui that Ash is experiencing, though her 1930s love affair with a hard drinking detective and heavy flirtation with a beautiful elusive fellow staff member do a lot to both take the edge off and stifle (or perhaps flatten) her curiosity. Goldstein’s world building of the Retro stops and stations and consumerist satire are very well done. They perfectly capture the FOMO frenzy, as well as the explorer’s shopaholic craving of acquiring their own piece of the collective past. Her descriptions of time travel sensory memories, are lush and beautifully delineated, but this seems to come at a cost. Too many other aspects of the novel are sacrificed or left wanting; characters and plotlines are under developed and left hanging, and the narrative shrinks to unstable Ash, as her world also shrinks. Unfortunately, Ash is the least interesting of the many other characters whose promising storylines never really take off. The ending felt rushed and abrupt and a little sloppy; as a reader, I felt abandoned. But this book will also make you rethink and maybe reframe the history you were taught or have read about in an exciting and visceral way. Jessica Goldstein is a talented writer; I am already looking forward to her next book. My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy.

[Ashley Cohoon · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐☆☆ (3/5 stars)

Retro by Jessica Goldstein had such a fun and unique concept, but the story itself was a bit of a mixed read for me.

The book follows Ash, who lands a job at Retro, a luxury time travel agency where people can travel back to different points in time instead of taking a regular vacation. On paper, that premise immediately caught my attention. I love the idea of a glamorous time travel company and the possibilities that come with revisiting the past, seeing different eras, and realizing that time travel may not be as simple or harmless as it seems.

There were definitely parts of the book I liked. The idea behind Retro was creative, and I appreciated the way the story looked at memory, nostalgia, and the emotional pull of the past. I also liked some of the side characters, especially Miles and Luca, who brought more life and humor to the story. The time travel elements were interesting, especially when the book started exploring the consequences of messing with time and how it could affect people mentally and emotionally.

That being said, the book felt a little all over the place for me. There were a lot of characters, storylines, timelines, relationships, and emotional threads happening at once, and I sometimes had a hard time knowing where to focus. I wanted the plot to feel tighter and more centered, because the concept was strong enough that it did not need quite so many extra pieces.

I also struggled to fully connect with Ash. I understood that she was trying to figure herself out, but I did not always feel invested in her choices or relationships. The romance pieces did not completely work for me either, and I wished there had been more chemistry and emotional depth instead of feeling like I was being told what to feel.

The last part of the book did pick up and became more engaging, but the ending felt abrupt. After spending so much time with the story, I wanted more answers and a stronger sense of closure.

Overall, Retro had a really cool premise and some thoughtful ideas about time, memory, and identity, but the pacing, scattered plot, and open ending kept me from loving it. I can see this working better for readers who enjoy slower, more reflective time travel stories, but for me it landed as an interesting but uneven read.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine | Ballantine Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

[seher · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 / i love the premise of the book and it had some great character and plot moments. however, overall the execution felt a bit uneven along a couple lines.

plot:

albeit on the slower side, the first 25-30% contained interesting establishing— scene-setting and character building. from about the 30-80% mark, for the most part, plot and character development lagged in any meaningful or truly additive way. i don’t mind books that are largely atmospheric or character driven, but what happened in the middle felt repetitive; describing various “days in the life” of work at retro in vivid detail that didn’t feel particularly purposeful or compelling to me personally. there were a few points of intrigue introduced in these portions, but they quickly floated away as we returned to scenes that felt fairly inconsequential.

the final 20% picked up stakes and a meaningful turn in the plot. i understanding the choice to the end the book as it was, especially if the author intended this be focused on an alternate reality workplace. however, i think the turn could have been introduced much sooner, with a tightened middle, and the latter portion of the book could have shown ash grappling with how to handle the turn of events— building out the story from there. great bones for the plot, great world building in certain spaces, just the overall execution didn’t hit the mark for me.

character:

i think ash spoke to the existential angst present in many folks today. it feels tender and timely in a way that’s needed. being on the more intense end of that angst spectrum, she may not fully resonate for everybody; but personally, i found myself highlighting a few of the passages explaining her resignation towards certain cultural norms— i rarely highlight. i think ash had even more potential to be developed as a character. her character was mixed with these super precise, poignant observations and admissions, and often then floated off into a more generic space. there was so much more room to ground her, dimensionalize her, and bring her to life.

overall, tighter editing may have helped. as is, the book has enough source material to be adapted for TV. sort of westworld, but the actual past is the “theme park” and more workplace dynamics etc. i could see a killer book in jessica goldstein’s future with some more development over time.

[Alexandra Morales · Rating 3 out of 5]

****Many thanks to Netgalley, Random House and Ballantine for an advanced eArc in exchange for my honest opinion****

The first 30% HAD me. Then 30%-60% bored me, we picked it back up again from 60%-80% and then I was lost again. Lol TOO many big chunks of time where my attention was lost. A solid 3 star rounded up.

First off who hasn't felt like Ash from time to time. I have deep nostalgia for the late 90s early 2000s that I will never get to experience again. I thought Jessica wrote nostalgia so incredibly well. I felt the yearning through the pages, the happiness of remembered adventures and eventual sadness thinking back on those golden summers.

If a book had a soundtrack this one would be of mourning doves cooing, of crickets chirping hidden in the grasses and sprinklers (you know the ones) that would turn on early in the morning.

Ash was a relatable character for sure. Anxiety of the future, thinking back to the past and comparing her life to those online because it is so readily available and constantly pushed into our faces. Making us feel like we are behind everyone else. Those are things I can connect with and felt a sisterhood at the beginning of the book with her.

After 30% I don't know I was just lost after learning about the shininess of Retro Metro gilded in Liftoff Gold. I feel like the plot plodded along. I was expecting to travel to WAY more places in the past but we only got to see two trips with explorer's. I was told more than experienced about the places Ash traveled to which was disappointing for a book centered around time travel.

It picked back up for me as Ash started to experience loss of memory, I didn't know what was going to happen next! Ro is all about telling the world how safe time travel is I was expecting a bigger ending than we got.

If the author or editor seriously slashed and cut the amount of times we get repeating paragraphs about nostalgia this would have been a 4 star read for me! What started off as sweet, sentimental reminders of times long past morphed into repeated monologues from the FMC almost every other page started to sour the story. Her co workers had paper thin personalities and did not stray to far from their tropes.

I don't regret the ride, I got to read some of things I wholeheartedly miss but the rest of it could use some TLC.

[Ashley Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ashley (Ash) is a down-on-her-luck millennial. She's failed as an actress and an administrative assistant. She lives with random strangers and is drowning in student loans and credit card debt. Her family ties are weak, and her best friend has made it big and is off traveling the world. Just when she thinks all is lost, she sees an ad for Retro, the new time travel agency that's hiring. She's quickly hired through some very unnecessarily secretive hiring process. We get a lot of information right up front that has a lot of exposition, and it almost lost me a few times. But…

This book really picks up after Ash joins Metro. We're introduced to her lovable coworkers, her weird tech bro boss, and a nostalgic and very well-written Retro Metro. Ash, along with her cohort and her pastport (the names are all so cute and clever in this book), set off on adventure after adventure all across the timeline. They take bachelor and bachelorette parties from the Wild West to Woodstock. They party like it’s 1920, 1930, and 1970. These scenes are written so well and they are so enjoyable. The different packages are so clever. The nostalgia of the trips actually hits very hard.

As the book progresses, we start to make more sense of Ash’s life and Retro. I felt like some of the mystery (outside of the main plot line) was just unnecessary—why did it take so long for us to understand who Pebbles was? I did not like the addition of why Ash quit acting. It felt out of place in the book and haphazardly added in for shock value.

The last few chapters are quite the rollercoaster. Perhaps all is not as it seems at Retro? I couldn’t put this down at the end. I was very into the entire last third of the book. I actually really enjoyed the twist(s); however, the ending of the book NEEDED better closure. It just needed that one more line. If you’re the kind of person who needs closure in a book, this one isn’t for you.

Overall, this sci-fi delivers on millennial woes, feeling like you don’t quite belong, a fun and interesting twist on time travel, corporate America but making it time travel, and a lot of nostalgia. A solid, enjoyable read once it hits its stride.

Solid 3.5/5 stars.

*I received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Quill (thecriticalreader) · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars

The irony of Retro, a book about time travel, is that it is almost pathetically a product of its time. Retro follows Ash, a depressed thirty-year-old failed actor with mountains of debt, no job, and no close family. Her only friend, Pebbles, doesn’t seem to have time for her since becoming an overnight Hollywood success. The modern world is a dumpster fire filled with corporate greed, shallow influencers, pollution, etc., etc. Thus, Ash jumps at the chance to work for Retro, a time travel agency created by tech-billionaire Ro Temple that offers wealthy customers the chance to vacation in America’s past. Ash quickly finds herself at home at her new job, where she spends her free time galivanting across time with her officemates—and forgets her all-consuming dread of the future.

Perhaps I’m too harsh as someone who has an academic background in history and reads a lot of time travel novels, but the central question Retro explores is painfully unoriginal: given the ills of our modern era, would we be better off in the past? Even the most obtuse reader will immediately know the answer to that question, as well as see the ending from a mile away.

That said, it’s hard to feel a sense of anger toward Retro, in part due to its earnestness. Goldstein lends no subtlety to the book’s thematic core, and much of the book reads like a thousand Buzzfeed articles smashed into a novel. But although Goldstein may be clumsily exploring unoriginal themes of modern angst and misplaced nostalgia, the point she is trying to make is nevertheless an important one. Similarly, the book’s critiques of our modern era are haphazard and obvious, but some passages—such as those that touch on the sexual mistreatment of women—ache with genuine anguish sure to resonate with many readers.

The worldbuilding of the time travel agency is inventive and fun, although nothing about it makes sense if one thinks about it for too long. But, much like the Retro Metro itself, perhaps the fun of it lies in not thinking too deeply and enjoying the fantasy.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Books4Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5⭐ARC Review: Retro is a book where I honestly have no idea how where to begin.
.
Maybe this is fitting when writing a review for a novel where the main character is unsatisfied with how her life is going and decides to work for a time travel company as a tour guide.
.
But there are so many aspects of this book that I deeply enjoyed, so let's start by going through those.
.
First off, the premise of this book itself is very unique and fun. I thought the author did great with showcasing the time travel company and how it worked along with the pros and cons of time travel itself.
.
That leads me into the next aspect of this book I loved, the liabilities of time travel in this book. We have seen time travel stories countless times over the years. However, the pros and cons of time travel depicted in this book felt all their own. I feel like many of the positives and negative aspects of a time travel company brought up were very innovative or at least slightly twisted versions of common time travel tropes.
.
Finally, I really liked the characters in this book and felt they were all quite memorable. There were some characters we follow for the entirety of the book like Ash, our main character. And then there are characters that we see for a limited time in the book or even just through phone calls, texts and flashbacks like Pebbles. However, I felt like all of these characters were extremely descriptive and vibrant in their own way as many of these characters had their own quirky personality traits, hobbies, styles or just something that made them come alive off the page in some way.
.
I think the only "con" if you want to call it that is the book left me wanting more. I am not sure if Goldstein will ever consider writing a sequel to this novel, but I think there is potential for one there especially with how the book ends.

All in all, if you feel the time travel trope is overdone then you need to read this book because I think it may just change your mind.

My review is available on my bookstagram (Books4Jessica): https://www.instagram.com/p/DYdYjUTDb...

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ash's life is going nowhere: a failed actress, she's just gotten fired from a dead-end job and is drowning in debt. When she sees an ad that the time traveling company Retro is hiring, she applies—and gets the job. Retro is like nothing Ash has ever experienced, but there are downsides to traveling all willy nilly through time...

"If Ash's education had taught her anything, it's that what women did in private did not count as history. Real history was about what men did in public: inventing factory equipment, crashing the stock market, killing each other."

I really, really enjoyed this one and I can see why it's rated so low.

Ash's character is...jarring to read with 2026 eyes. At least, until you realize that this story is not a time travel story, not really.

It's a #MeToo story.

It's a story about someone who is intelligent and talented and constantly passed over, who's a little bitter about it and yet keeps pushing people away because she wasn't smart enough to not understand what was going to happen. She sees herself as an aberration, a nothing, a "it just happens, get over it," mentality and doesn't see the system behind male supremacy keeping it together.

Ann overthinks a lot, but doesn't do a lot of unpacking, if that makes sense? There's obviously more to it than that, but I don't want to spoil the fun.

Anywho, I really enjoyed this. I know I already said it, but it was good.

I love a solid timey wimey endeavor, and this one led out with a "hey, don't think about it too hard, too too hard" (to quote Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), when you were...actually kinda supposed to be thinking about it a little hard.

Fun fact: apparently Ben Franklin really liked to fuck. That man pulled. He puuuuuullllled. Something that was not at all covered in any of my textbooks or from my teachers.

I think if you enjoyed The Ministry of Time, you'd enjoy this.

I received an ARC from the publisher

[Megan megmakestimetoread · Rating 5 out of 5]

Retro is a strong debut novel from Goldstein. On the surface it is about Ash, a "failed actress" who is experiencing existential ennui and sleepwalking through her life. She becomes a time travel agent, taking rich tourists into the past to "relive" experiences like Woodstock, the Wild West, and the JFK assassination. But really this is a modern take on Fight Club through a Millennial female gaze. It is a wake up call to Millennial women who believe that we live in a post-feminism world and now actively commoditize themselves, rather than only allowing men to do it. This is similar to how Fight Club took on Gen X men who felt empty and "un-masculine" and relied on status and consumerism to make them feel alive.

Ash allows herself to be swept up by her new job and the excitement. She actively ignores her gut instinct that things at Retro aren't what they seem. She goes after the unavailable "sadboi" even after dating a private eye who loves and accepts her for who she is (only problem is that he lives in 1937). I read a review where the reader liked Miles and I felt like we were reading two separate books! But I digress. Really this book does what I think Yesteryear wanted to do. It highlights how women continue to be marginalized and cut down by men and society at large. When women make themselves influencers or post on social media and curate their life, is this an act of independence/freedom/manifesting? Or are we just playing into the role that men allow us to have - commoditizing our beauty, showing how we can "have it all", covering up emptiness.

This is a great book club pick because there is so much to talk about! I was on the edge of my seat to see if Jane was a true friend! My jaw dropped when Pebbles started crying at the loss of her friendship with Ash! I still don't know how I feel about Luca; he seemed shifty and I never could tell where his loyalties lie. There is a great twist in this book. I kept trying to figure out exactly what it was going to be and that was fun. I do think the ending was a bit rushed. But this is definitely an intriguing book that kept be interested for 400 pages. I can't wait to see what Goldstein writes next. 4.5 stars. Thanks to Ballantine and Net Galley for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Margie Bunting · Rating 3 out of 5]

Retro is the ambitious debut novel of Jessica M. Goldstein about a 30-year-old former actress who is trying to find herself as an "agent" in a time travel tour company. Ash's acting career was disappointing, and her recent administrative job has disappeared, along with most of her money. So when she sees the help-wanted ad from Retro, she hopes it's an opportunity to use her acting skills to replenish her bank account.

What follows is an extremely detailed description of this unique company and everything that is involved in it, and I have to admit that I was fascinated for the first half of the book. We learn all about the employees of Retro, including the charismatic CEO who came up with the idea and the right people to make the concept work and who has taken a particular shine to Ash. We are treated to a look at the luxuriant apartments where the employees are housed and the perks they receive (e.g., quick, personal pleasure trips into history), but also some of the aspects of time travel that are briefly troubling to Ash, but don't seem to be of concern to her coworkers. What is missing, however, is a plot. Yes, we follow Ash as she co-hosts a couple of groups on their selected trips into such sites as the Old West, with more than a hint of danger, but these are given short shrift. And there is a bit of romance with a couple of the men Ash meets and references to her friendship with a former fellow student whose acting career is much more successful than hers. There are also endless musings about time travel and life in general and interest by the employees in when Retro can offer trips to the future as well. And the story really comes off the rails at the end, seemingly out of nowhere.

It felt a bit self-indulgent and made for a longer book than necessary, but author Goldstein has a displayed a talent for storytelling that will hopefully be developed and edited in future fiction offerings to make them less arduous reads.

My review is based on a complimentary pre-release copy of this book.