REVIEW: Tempest (Tempest #1) by Julie Cross

Tempest (Tempest #1) by Julie Cross

Genre: Young Adult, YA Science Fiction

Pages: 352 (hardback)

Publication: January 2012

(St. Martin's Griffin)

via NetGalley

Goodreads Summary: The year is 2009. Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun.

That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like his previous time jumps. Now he’s stuck in 2007 and can’t get back to the future.

Desperate to somehow return to 2009 to save Holly but unable to return to his rightful year, Jackson settles into 2007 and learns what he can about his abilities.

But it’s not long before the people who shot Holly in 2009 come looking for Jackson in the past, and these “Enemies of Time” will stop at nothing to recruit this powerful young time-traveler. Recruit… or kill him.

Piecing together the clues about his father, the Enemies of Time, and himself, Jackson must decide how far he’s willing to go to save Holly… and possibly the entire world.

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Review: The subject of time travel can be a tricky topic to write about. There are many logistics and parameters that can really bog down the story if not handled correctly. Julie Cross does an excellent job of dealing with the scientific aspect of time travel, while still keeping a very entertaining story in her new novel, Tempest.

The year is 2009 and Jackson is an ordinary teenager. That is until he falls asleep in class one day and discovers he can jump through time. He finds time travel is nothing like it is in the movies. He can go back but nothing that he does has any effect on the future. Jackson trusts his secret to his best friend Adam, a science geek, who is bound and determined that there is a scientific explanation for Jackson’s extraordinary powers. When Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, are attacked in her dorm room, Holly is wounded. Jackson freaks out and somehow travels back in time to the year 2007. Jackson is desperate to return to his year and save Holly. Unfortunately for Jackson there is more going on than he can even imagine.

So being an absolute Geek, I was more than a little interested in Tempest when I read the synopsis. I love movies and television shows that deal with time travel and time line variations. Julie Cross takes a subject that can get heavy on the science and turns it into a very well developed story while keeping the fundamentals of the scientific aspect light and interesting. I was completely engrossed in the story from the get go and loved Julie's writing style. The characters were a tiny bit flat at first, as if they could be any teenagers in any part of the world and oh, by the way one of them can kind of time travel. As the story progressed and we got deeper into the sub plots they truly seemed to grow, developing as every page was turned. I love when you can read a book and literally see the character growth happening with every word read.

The time travel aspect is truly unique, and by the end of the book you can not tell who is the enemy and who the good guys are. There is a fine line for both parties, and each of them kind of fall into a gray area, setting up for what I believe could be a truly amazing series. I can see why this was optioned as a movie even before its release into the wild; this series could be epic depending on where the author takes us. I for one will be highly anticipating the next installment.

Rating: 4 stars