What Time is Love? is published today in paperback by Orion, as well as being available as an audiobook, eBook and in hardback.
It is being published in 13 countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Norway, Turkey and Ukraine.
And the reviews are in…
“Williams has written a brilliant, witty, defiantly unsentimental examination of privilege and class and sex and selfhood. It is a testament to the quality of both the premise and its execution that, even after nearly 400 pages, I was left wanting more.” review by Marianne Levy, The i
“Holly Williams’s lovely, breezy debut combines a beguiling love story about two people powerfully attracted to each other with big ideas about circumstance, class and social change … As the decades roll, the novel charts in particular changing circumstances for women and the shifting expectations around motherhood, yet Williams’s touch is so light and deft, it never gets bogged down in social detail even while emphasising the external forces shaping and ultimately defining what happens to Albert and Violet. A perfect summer read that surely marks Williams out as the next David Nicholls.” review by Claire Allfree in The Metro
“The shifting eras of the novel’s backdrop shape three distinct sections that combine the fizz of a romance with an earnest inquiry into the vastly changing (in some respects at least) fortunes of women in the second half of the 20th century, along with questions of class and privilege, and a glimpse into the history of British socialism … What makes her novel so interesting is that while readers will root for the characters as a couple, their struggles as individuals make them more endearing still.” review by Hephzibah Anderson, The Observer
“Williams’s engaging debut asks an eternal question: what if you meet the right person at the wrong time? They first meet at the age of 20 in 1947, and in a neatly structured plot twist, again in 1967 and 1987, freshly embarking on a relationship that is challenged each time by politics, protests and the clash of their differing classes.” review by Eithne Farry, The Mail on Sunday
In 2022, What Time is Love? was one of Waterstones best books for May’s best books, and one of the Evening Standard‘s ‘best books of 2022‘. It was a ‘Spring pick 2022‘ from The London Review of Books bookshop. Cosmopolitan picked it as one of their ‘hottest new beach reads‘ and it was one of Metro‘s ‘best summer novels‘. Bella and Best both included What Time is Love? as one of the best books published in June. Fabulous called it “the new One Day“.
A startlingly great debut. Holly’s beautiful prose smoulders, crackles and roars, but it’s the storytelling that really astonishes. Propulsive, immersive, a book you can really live in. This book is masterfully crafted, brilliantly socially observed, but most of all it’s a dazzlingly and painfully resonant exploration of the way women live, and how our freedom must be cherished and protected. – Daisy Buchanan
What Time is Love? is not only a beautifully told love story but also a fascinating account of the changing social mores of the 20th century. I found it delightful, insightful and immersive. – Kate Eberlen
A unique and wonderfully crafted debut, What Time Is Love? has it all – nostalgia and romance, captivating characters and stunning prose. It’s a truly tender, thought-provoking exploration of what makes a relationship work – and of how, when it comes to love, timing is sometimes everything. An unforgettable story with writing that sparkles: a gem of a read. – Holly Miller
Holly Williams has written a stunning, skilful, deftly drawn, cockle-warmer of a novel that somehow sweeps you through half a century while feeling like a leisurely afternoon. Prose so good I couldn’t stop underlining. – Lauren Bravo
A fiercely original novel on the powerful effect circumstance and timing has on life, on love. A brave and astute write on politics, with feisty and complex protagonists in Albert and Violet, What Time Is Love? skilfully excavates the great questions of our modern age; the battle for equality, the difficulty that is marriage and the inter-generational effects of class on the individual. A wonderful, original and powerful debut by the very talented Holly Williams. She is wild and brilliant. – Elaine Feeney