Time Will Tell by Hannah Bonam-Young Narrator: Victoria Connolly, Maxim Reston
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Improbable Meet-Cute: Second Chances #2
Pages: 92
Length: 1 hour and 48 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on January 20, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads
When a mysterious time capsule leads a Toronto teacher to England, she discovers some loves are worth crossing oceans—and decades—to find, from New York Times bestselling author Hannah Bonam-Young.
When a history teacher receives a letter from her deceased grandmother revealing a secret love affair in the 1950s, it leads her to a time capsule hidden decades ago. But it’s the charming grandson of her grandmother’s lost love who changes everything, proving that sometimes the heart knows exactly where—and when—it belongs.
Hannah Bonam-Young’s Time Will Tell is part of The Improbable Meet-Cute: Second Chances, stories for star-crossed lovers and hopeless romantics. They can be read or listened to in one sitting. Let’s do it again.
My Review:
Too much of a good thing is not always wonderful. Especially when the good thing is all about a bad thing. I’ll explain later.
Nevertheless, that’s how I found myself searching for something a whole lot lighter and fluffier than the book I had planned to close out this week. Which, come to think of it, is how I ended up reviewing Accidentally Yours, the first story in the Improbable Meet-Cute Second Chances series and what led me to pick up the second story, Time Will Tell, to finish out this week on the lighter note that it needed.
This turned out to be exactly what I was looking for – and even better than I’d hoped.
Like the first book, this is definitely a meet-cute, but it isn’t the usual sort of second-chance romance at all. Although it absolutely does represent a second chance, but it’s a second chance at a couple of removes in a way that turned out to be lovely.
Georgia Whitaker is a history teacher, who is doing her best to get her senior-year high school class to see that history is happening all around them all the time in ways both large and small, but always meaningful.
She’s also found a very personal historical project to serve as her example – and the students are more engaged than they have been for quite some time. Then again, it’s not often that a high school glass gets to dissect the history of one of their own teachers!
Georgia and her class have been diving into the history of a very special – and very personal – time capsule. Once upon a time, in the 1950s – which does make her students giggle and snort more than a bit – Georgia’s beloved grandmother Bonnie Foster found the love of her life with Martha Bennett. But in the conservative 1950s, their love was only safe as long as it was hidden.
When they parted, Bonnie and Martha put together a time capsule of their photos, letters and memories, and buried it near the Toronto apartment where they’d been so happy together for not nearly long enough.
Upon her death, Bonnie left her granddaughter, Georgia, a letter that revealed the truth she could not manage to say during her lifetime, along with the location of the buried treasure. But not its key. Martha took the key with her back to England.
Which is where Georgia and her class come in. Georgia has researched – as history teachers do – and discovered the identity of Martha’s grandchild, a Dr. Callum Lewis in Nottinghamshire England. Her class helps, hinders and snarks their collective way through Georgia’s first email to Callum, and is invested in seeing what story time will tell, seven decades after Bonnie and Martha went their separate ways..
Escape Rating A-: There’s history, and then there’s history. I chose this story because it appealed on multiple levels. I am just as fascinated with history as Georgia and her prized student Phaedra were. Time capsules are weird and fascinating in their own right as well, especially when they turn up something unexpected like Bonnie and Martha’s long-hidden secret.
The book I intended to close this week off with was also historical, and it was also a history that fascinates me, but it was dark and heavy and way too much like another dark and heavy historical fiction book I just finished. Too much historical evil too close together turned out to be too much gruesomeness even though both books were good. I’ll come back to the second one in a couple of weeks once I get rid of more of the grues.
But this was light, frothy and especially fun. Also very romantic in a way that we don’t usually have a chance to see in something this short. AND it comes full circle in a delightful way, as Bonnie and Martha’s time capsule is filled with their correspondence, while the romance between Bonnie’s granddaughter Georgia and Martha’s grandson Callum is also a romance through correspondence.
Even though the increasingly flirty emails between Georgia and Callum are facilitated through the instantaneousness of the internet this is still an epistolary romance. It’s so cute and works SO well because even in email they have the chance to think about what they’ll each say and anticipate what the other will respond. The built-in delays of their respective time zones, Callum in the UK and Georgia in Toronto, combined with their busy schedules, build in minutes and even hours of worry and wonder and waiting to see if they’re on the same page even though they’re an ocean apart.
Time Will Tell, well, tells a marvelously sweet romance that manages to build beautifully. Even though they fall in love nearly at first sight of each other’s words, they still have enough time to earn the HEA that their grandmothers were too far ahead of their time to see.
As with many of the Amazon Original Stories, this was even better in audio. Victoria Connolly was terrific as Georgia, and Maxim Reston was marvelous, including his accent, as Callum. One of the things I like best about these stories in general is that the casting is generally spot on and the stories are even better when each character has their own narrator, and that was delightfully true this production.
I’m sure I’ll be back with another one of these the next time I need a light and frothy reading/listening pick-me-up!
Accidentally Yours by 