REVIEW: Once in a Timeline by Iman Hariri-Kia

Once in a Timeline by Iman Hariri-Kia: Laia Grace was determined to make it as a New York City lifestyle influencer. Her days revolved around picture-perfect routines, beautiful little details, and the online life she’d worked so hard to create. Then reality started glitching—and suddenly, she was trapped inside an endless loop of her own “day in the life” video. Enter Noah: unfiltered, brooding, and just as trapped as she was. Together, they set out to figure out what was happening and how to escape. But the more time they spent together, the harder it became to ignore the attraction between them—or the truths they’d both been avoiding.

The combination of a Groundhog Day-style predicament, a social-media influencer, and a mysterious stranger was such a fun setup. ONCE IN A TIMELINE took the familiar fantasy of starting over and gave it a wonderfully strange twist. Beneath the time-loop mystery and influencer humor was a more personal story. The premise was playful, but the questions it raised about authenticity went deeper..

Laia determination to succeed had become tangled up with the person she believed she needed to be, making the prospect of letting go of that carefully managed identity particularly difficult. Noah brought a very different energy to Laia’s polished world. Brooding, unfiltered, and carrying struggles of his own, he challenged the image she had worked so hard to maintain. His connection with Laia offered room for both of them to look beyond appearances, confront what they were carrying, and recognize that nobody has their entire life figured out.

Noah was so not part of Laia’s perfectly curated plan. I loved the contrast between her polished influencer world and his decidedly unfiltered energy, especially as their banter gave way to those more vulnerable moments between them. There was something swoony about watching Laia let her guard down with someone who saw beyond the image she worked so hard to maintain. And the slow burn? The growing closeness, the longing, and the way they started showing up for each other made me root for these two even more.

The time-loop premise added plenty of imaginative fun, but the deeper appeal came from the questions it raised about identity, vulnerability, and letting yourself be known beyond the perfectly edited version. Add a brooding love interest, a slow-burn romance, and a clever take on online culture, and there’s plenty here for readers who like their rom-coms with a little magical weirdness and something meaningful underneath.

🎧 Narrated by Samantha Brentmoor, the audiobook added a fun extra dimension to Laia’s influencer world. The shifts into her polished “day in the life” voice, along with the added music and sound elements, helped distinguish those curated video sequences from the rest of the story.

TROPES & VIBES
⏳ Time-Loop Romance
📱 Influencer Heroine
🖤 Brooding Hero
🔗 Forced Proximity
💞 Strangers to Friends to Lovers
🔮 Magical Realism
🌀 Glitching Reality
💌 Unexpected Connection

Book Info:

Publication: October 13, 2026 | Cosmo Reads |

Get ready with me… to break out of the algorithm

Laia Grace is the New York City lifestyle influencer… or at least, she’s determined to be. After leaving her past behind to pursue her dreams, failure is not an option.

Every day, she films her aesthetic routine ― the perfect light, the perfect latte, the perfect life. Until one morning, her day starts to… glitch. Her neighbors flicker. Her best friend loops. And Laia realizes she’s no longer the creator, but the content ― and she’s trapped inside of her last “day in the life” video, forever playing on an endless, infinite loop.

That’s when a brooding, unshaven, decidedly unfiltered man (literally) crashes into frame. Noah’s been stuck in Laia’s timeline, too, and he’s desperate to get them both out. Together, Laia and Noah fight to outsmart the algorithm that’s captured them, uncovering secrets and confronting biases along the way.

As they grow closer, the line between performance and personhood blurs, and Laia realizes she might have to face the one thing she’s been avoiding all this time: herself.