Tempest by Julie Cross

Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi
Publication Date: January 3, 2012
Pages: 352
Source: Received an e-ARC from the publisher on 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.

My Opinion

Have you ever read a book that’s so amazing, and you love it so much, that you know even the best review can’t give the book the justice it deserves?

Tempest was a book like that for me.

I was drawn to Tempest when I saw the “broken flux capacitors” reference in the summary. Back to the Future is my favorite movie ever, so I knew Tempest was going to be a book for me! And I was right. Just like the summary of the book says, the time travel in Tempest doesn’t require a DeLorean, flux capacitor, or plutonium. (Or a Mr. Fusion once Doc updates the car in the future.) Julie Cross has created a whole new version of time travel, and I absolutely loved it! She brings alternate time lines into the mix, which adds a cool spin on things. It also made me think and theorize, which I loved. (Time-travel/alternate time-line/parallel universe topics always make me excited. I’m cool like that 😉

Jackson was a fantastic main character. He’s a 19 year old guy, which we don’t see much of as protagonists in YA fiction, so it was nice to read about someone different. He only recently learned he can time travel, but nothing he does affects his time line, so he has fun with it. What I liked best about him was how much he loved and cared for the people in his life, even if he wasn’t big on showing it all the time. His actions said everything. His girlfriend Holly was great as well. We got to see her in both 2009 and 2007, and I liked seeing the two different Holly’s. It was obvious from meeting both of them how two years — especially between 17 and 19 — can change a person. And Adam was awesome. He’s the Doc Brown of the group. I imagine Doc’s teenage self, if he was a teenager in 2009, would have been very similar to Adam! I also loved Jackson’s twin Courtney, although I don’t want to say much about her for fear of spoiling the book if you haven’t read it yet. I’m hoping we get to learn more about her throughout the series, because I have a feeling there’s more to her story than what we learned in Tempest.

And then there was the ending. Wow. I don’t want to give away spoilers, but the end will tug at your heart so much. I’m just glad I know this is going to be a trilogy, because if that was really the end, I would get seriously sad. There are also so many questions (and theories!) I want answers to, so I can’t wait to read the rest of this series.

Oh yeah, Tempest has also been optioned to become a movie! The book read very cinematically, so I can’t wait to see it on the big screen.

Thank you, Julie Cross, for writing such an excellent novel! I wish I could time travel into the future so I could read the rest of the trilogy without having to wait.