A futuristic time travel romance

Detours in Time follows the adventures of eccentric scientist Milt and his friend and former cleaner Tabitha, better known as Pinky. Milt has built a time travelling car and the two embark on a trip to the future, to see what life in 2047 will be like. Some of the discoveries are surprising, like the trend for body modification and human-animal hybridization that sees people having fish scales , animal limbs and even wings , while some are truly shocking, like the fact that the United States has been split by another civil war. When an unexpected detour on their way home almost causes the death of a young soldier during this war, they decide to return to the future to ensure that their actions have not had any unforeseen consequences, they find that by saving one life, they may have irreversibly changed another, and must try to figure out a way to fix their actions without causing any further damage.
I enjoy a good time travel story , and I found myself completely drawn in by the first part of this book, and the author's vision of the future though I found my self losing interest a little once the duo returned to their present and it became something of a more straight forward romance story. I struggled to find the romance believable, the characters just didn't quite sell it for me. I found the dialogue very unnatural at times, and not just when the author had clearly intended it to be so, as she does with some of the characters set in the future. It may just be that I am not a lover of romance in general, but I wish the book had spent more time on the time travelling and less on the developing relationship between the characters. The writing was snappy and the author was good at getting her point across, her vision of the future was well developed. The one little idiosyncrasy that grated on me was the repeated use of "he/she shook her head yes", which seems like a really awkward way of saying they nodded. I listened to the audio book, read by Emory Stagmer and I have to say I really liked the tone and timbre of his voice in general, the only exception being the rather breathy voice he chose to use for Pinky, it seemed far too juvenile for the character, and somewhat stereotypical. It made her sound more like a young teen than a woman in her prime, perfectly capable of standing on her own two feet, and speaking up for herself ( when allowed to do so !) It just didn't seem to fit with the character, which is a shame. I also wish he had been just a touch more dynamic at certain points of the story that called for more drama and intensity.
I was supplied with a copy of the audio book by the author, all opinions are my own.

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