Lily Tripp: Diary of an Accidental Time Traveller

This is an intriguing new slant to the time travel genre with a protagonist who doesn’t travel by choice to correct a timeline or right a wrong. It is completely in diary format and follows the story of Lily Tripp – a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl who ends up being transported into different centuries at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve – which coincidentally happens to be her birthday. Her tale starts on 18th December 2025 with Lily introducing herself, her family and her friends at school, including eccentric BF Poppy, Ollie (Lily’s crush) and cool Georgia – who looks down on them all. When she time travels, everyone she knows does so too. Although appearing in a completely different era, they remain within their home town of York: they have already been to the Victorian age and ancient Rome – resulting in Lily ‘missing’ two years’ of school. However, no one else apart from Lilly realises that they have time travelled. Life hits a new low when Lily reaches 1621 as Georgia’s servant, and has to just accept the awful treatment from that time, although being accused of witchcraft means her life could be in danger.

Whilst amusingly told in a young teen’s voice with clever throw away lines, in each time Lily battles to catch up with recent events from her family and friends who have clearly already existed in that timeline. You feel genuinely sorry for her as she tries to navigate situations and behaviour between different centuries and not stick out as being ‘weird; it is hard for her to live in the present. The main characters are engaging and there is interesting historical information.I’ve seen this advertised as Lottie Brooks meets Back to the Future – that’s not far off the mark! It deserves to be a series.