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An out-of-work actress gets a job as a tour guide for an ultra-luxury time travel company—only to discover her trips to the past could upend her present—in this rollicking, speculative debut novel.
When Ash spots an ad for Retro during a depressing Instagram scroll—she's in debt and unemployed; everyone else is, evidently, thriving—she's surprised the algorithm sent it her way. She's heard of recreational time travel, but it's way out of her budget. Then she sees the caption: Come away with us! We're hiring.
So begins Ash's life as a Time Travel Agent, leading wealthy tourists on vacations to historical hotspots. She takes bachelorette parties to live out their cowboy-romance fantasies in the Old West; she chaperones "'20s for your twenties" birthday excursions to speakeasies; she smiles politely as rich Wall Street guys give prospecting a shot during the Gold Rush. It's all thrilling, outrageous, and totally surreal. Bygone America is just a Retro Metro ride away.
Despite Ash's tendency toward cynicism, she finds herself swept up in her dazzling new job. Sure, Ash isn't the actress she'd always dreamed she'd be. But isn't this so much better? It's like Ash's life is a movie, complete with an impossible love triangle. How is she supposed to choose between her mysterious office crush and the handsome private eye pursuing her in 1937?
For the first time in years, Ash's life feels enviable—so she'd really rather not pay attention to the strange things happening to her memory and relationships outside Retro. But as her trips threaten to unravel her real life, she confronts an unsettling truth: Escaping into the past was never really an escape at all.
"This is a 2020s office novel that cleverly lampoons both the luxury travel industry and self-obsessed tech bros' myopic innovations... A nuanced, biting cautionary tale about how not staying present can erase our very selves." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"In her speculative first novel, Goldstein expertly combines the nostalgia of historical fiction, the allure of science fiction, the humor of workplace fiction, and hints of romance to create an immersive tale that will appeal to diverse audiences." —Booklist (starred review)
"Readers will find it worth the ride." —Publishers Weekly
"Retro is so much fun! It's got nostalgia, ennui, inappropriate workplace crushes, jaunts to weird little bits of history, terrifying corporate overreach, and jokes: What more could you want?" —Holly Gramazio, author of The Husbands
"A magnetic read—equal parts charming, melancholy, and strange—perfect for those with sharp tongues but yearning hearts." —Emily Hunt Kivel, author of Dwelling
"Retro puts a fresh spin on the time-travel genre, blending the allure of times gone past with the absurdities of corporate work culture. Shrewd, witty and original." —Aisling Rawle, author of The Compound
This information about Retro was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jessica M. Goldstein is a journalist and humorist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vulture, Marie Claire, McSweeney's, and more. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she was born and raised in New Jersey and currently lives in Washington, D.C. Retro is her first novel.
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