Rule One: Travel can only occur to a point within your lifetime.
Rule Two: You can only travel for ninety seconds.
Rule Three: You can only observe.
The rules cannot be broken.

Official Synopsis:
Scientist Beth Darlow has discovered the unimaginable. She’s built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time—to any point in the traveler’s lifetime—and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it’s not the traveler has no way to interact with the past. They can only observe.
 
After Beth’s husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella—their only daughter—and continue the work they started. Mired in grief and threatened by her ruthless CEO, Beth pushes herself to the limit to prove the value of her technology.
 
Then the impossible happens. Simply viewing personal history should not alter the present, but with each new observation she makes, her own timeline begins to warp.
 
As her reality constantly shifts, Beth must solve the puzzles of her past, even if it means forsaking her future.

My Review:
In short words, amazing. I kind of went into this expecting a lot of time travel science, that would possibly go over my head. But the balance between the technicalities in the world building and the emotional story really took this up to a higher level.

As a huge fan of time travel stories, I found the plot very believable, the core concept of traveling within your own memories isn’t new per se, however the author added a unique fresh take on the idea.

Slowly growing into this action packed plot, I loved following all the little clues and the changes were very captivating. Like spot-the-difference, building into a mind-blowing crescendo in the final chapters. I was at the edge of my seat.

Absolutely 5 stars! 🌟

Thank you Orbit Books for the review copy.

Publishes March 18, 2025

Title: The Third Rule of Time Travel
Author: Philip Fracassi
Genre: Science Fiction, Mystery
Rating: 5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️