Annie’s Apple (Second Chance 2) by John A Heldt-a review

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date April 11, 2023

Six years after emerging from a fountain of youth, siblings Bill, Paul, and Annie Carpenter, time travelers from 2022, make their way in 1911.

In New York, Bill and wife Cassie finish a year as educators and struggle to start a family, while Annie tries her hand as a society reporter. In Arizona, Paul and Andy Lee, sergeants and brothers-in-law, attempt to keep the Mexican Revolution from spilling across the border.

For all, life marches on. Then the soldiers receive new orders, Paul and Annie meet alluring strangers, and the family’s fortunes take dramatic turns.

In ANNIE’S APPLE, the sweeping sequel to THE FOUNTAIN, five young adults find love, danger, and adventure in the age of factory fires, high society, and the sinking of the Titanic.

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REVIEW: ANNIE’S APPLE is the second instalment in John A Heldt’s adult SECOND CHANCE historical, time travel series focusing on the Carpenter siblings-Paul, Bill and Annie.

NOTE: Due to the nature of the story line premise including attempted suicide, there may be triggers for more sensitive readers.

SOME BACKGROUND :The Second Chance series focuses on the search for the Fountain of Youth. In May of 2022, 81 year old William Carpenter is a retired professor of folklore, learns the mythology about the Fountain of Youth may be the reality he and his siblings are looking for. Having just buried his wife, William believes he has nothing more to lose, and convinces his siblings Paul 75, who has terminal cancer, and Annie 72, a paraplegic, to test the proverbial magic waters in La Paz, Mexico but the myth comes with the caveat of time travel, a caveat wherein the siblings have no idea where in the world or when they will land.

Told from several omniscient third person perspectives ANNIE’S APPLE advances the series approximately five years. The year is now 1911, and the Carpenter siblings, all in their twenties and thirties, are about to face and experience some of the most painful and heart breaking events in history from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan, to the sinking of the HMS Titanic. The Carpenter siblings are witness to, and unwitting participants in historical happenings and developments of 1911-1912 but the Carpenter’s are not the only time travellers to arrive in Manhattan in 1911, and Paul will find himself flirting with another broken heart from the future. As the Carpenter family grows, and the next generation is born, the siblings must come to terms with the past, a past that is now a part of their present. Annie will have loved and lost, not once but twice; and Bill, having never had children in his previous life, will learn the meaning of true love and acceptance.

John A Heldt, once again, blends a little fact with fiction, taking literary license with events from the past. The reader is up close and personal with the what ifs and whys of yesterday, as the sibling bear witness without interfering in the history of the past. The premise is engaging and captivating; the romances are passionate but ill-fated; the characters are impassioned and struggling.

Click HERE for Sandy’s review of book one THE FOUNTAIN

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy