Sea Spray (Time Box 3) by John A Heldt-a review

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date December 20, 2020

Months after stealing two time machines from a madman who wants them back, the Lanes, a family of seven, seek peace and safety in 1927, the latest stop on a journey through time. For a while, each succeeds.

Parents Mark and Mary find housing in affluent East Hampton, New York, where a gracious elderly couple offers use of their mansion. Son Jordan and his new wife, Jessie, plan a family. Siblings Laura, Jeremy, and Ashley pursue fun and adventure. All form strong friendships with the Prices, a mysterious mirror-image family that lives next door.

Billionaire Robert Devereaux could not care less. Reeling from the theft of his million-dollar devices, he sends a hit man to the past to retrieve his property and rid the world of his former business partner and his troublesome clan.

Randy Taylor, who programs the machines, is determined to stop him. He tries to undermine his boss and save the Lanes, even as he tries to help his mother beat a deadly illness. He pines for the day he can join his fugitive friends and rekindle a promising relationship with Laura Lane.

Filled with romance, humor, and heartbreak, SEA SPRAY follows a modern family on the adventure of a lifetime as they navigate their way through the exciting and often dangerous world of Lindbergh, Gershwin, and Fitzgerald.

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REVIEW:SEA SPRAY is the third instalment in John A Heldt’s time travel series focusing on the Lane family. SEA SPRAY can be read as a stand alone but I recommend reading the series in order for back story and history as there is a common theme and continuing premise throughout.

SOME BACKGROUND: Having created two time machines in 2021 known as the Time Box, patriarch Mark Lane discovers that his business partner, billionaire Robert Devereaux, wants to use the Time Boxes for questionable purposes. Having prepared for weeks, Mark Lane and his family pull up roots, and send themselves, along with the Time Boxes, back in time. Robert Devereaux desperate to retrieve the time boxes, and punish his one-time partner, hires a modern day assassin who goes on a time travel hunt for Mark Lane and his family.

Told from several third person perspectives SEA SPRAY finds the family transported to 1927, the roaring twenties, at the height of Prohibition in East Hampton, New York where the family will summer in the mansion of an elderly couple. Meeting their neighbors, Tom and Madeline Price, as well as their children, who will befriend and fall in love, the Lane’s will quickly discover that they are unable to relax when a messenger from the twenty-first century warns that that Devereaux’s assassin survived his last encounter with the Lanes, and is continuing his search for the time-travelling family. From Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, to Charles Lindbergh, and black market alcohol, bootleggers, and speakeasies, the Lane family will witness and participate in their share of history, affecting the lives of the people they encountered along the way. Found once again, the Lanes are forced to travel to a time when the world was at war with itself, and in doing so, hope to prevent someone else from changing the outcome of the second world war.

Once again, back in 2022, the Lane’s accomplice Randy Taylor, devices a way to warn the family of an impending attack by Devereaux’s assassin but in doing so, comes to the hard realization, that the woman he loves, has fallen in love with someone else. Having lost both his mother and father in a short period of time, Randy makes a decision that does not go according to plan.

SEA SPRAY is a story of family and relationships, friendships and love; history, time travel, science fiction, secrets, power and control. The premise is intriguing and entertaining; the romances are subtle and sweet; the colorful characters are numerous and energetic. John A Heldt pulls the reader into a wonderful and historic glimpse at the fun, flirty and dangerous twenties.

Reading Order and Previous Reviews
The Lane Betrayal
The Fair

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy