Tempest by Julie Cross – a Review

Tempest by Julie Cross is her debut novel, and is the first book in her Tempest series.  Below is the official description of the book, followed by my review.

Description:
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.

Review:

As you can see by the description, our hero Jackson Meyer is a college student, who has a secret.  He can travel back in time, but does fast and short jumps, mostly for fun.  The only person Jackson has told about his secret is his friend Adam, who loves to tinkle with scientific things.  Together Adam monitors Jackson for time lapses, how far back he can go, etc, so they can figure out why Jackson is different, and has this ability.  Jackson also has a girlfriend, Holly, who does not know about his time traveling fun.  One day, when Holly and Jackson are together, someone breaks into the bedroom, and a fight ensues, with Holly getting shot, and Jackson jumping out of the room back in time,  2 years to 2007.

Jackson is desperate to go back to 2009 and save Holly, but each time he jumps, he goes back to his childhood days, or remains in 2007. For whatever reason, he cannot go back to his normal time.  Jackson over the course jumping back a bit more time, or in 2007, begins to learn more about his father, the CIA, and the so called Enemies of Time.  Jackson begins to discover, that he is not the only person who has this ability, and his father, and the cronies of his father that he meets in different time zones are all part of an elaborate division of the CIA.  I thought this was an interesting concept, time travel, but I found the early part of the book somewhat confusing, as Jackson kept trying to jump in time, meeting so many people; his young dead sister, enemies, CIA, his dead mother and the truth behind his abilities.  I personally found some of it slow, but trying to figure out who was who; or who was good or bad, throwing me off. 

But by the time we reached 2/3 of the book, it became very exciting.  You finally began to understand who was who, and yet so many twists still remained.  Eventually Jackson does go back to 2009, with the help of his father and his CIA friends.  Holly is ok, and she learns about Jackson’s abilities, which she does accept freely.  I did enjoy his relationship with Holly, friendship with Adam, and really cared about his dead sister Courtney.  Cross did an excellent job creating all of these characters.  I would like to know more about Emily and the leaders of Enemies of Time.

Rather then give spoilers, Jackson does get a lot of answers, makes decisions for his future, and for those around him.  I also want to find out how far Jackson can go to learn more of his abilities, as hinted by those desperately trying to recruit or kill him. Julie Cross has left enough open for us to come back in her next book of this trilogy, Vortex.  Though at first I wasn’t sure if I would continue, the final exciting third of the book was enough to convince me to read on.

Reviewed by Barb