Blagica Jankuloska
I stared at a blank Word doc for twenty minutes trying to figure out how to review this book. That pretty much sums up the experience: I don’t have much to say because the book didn’t give me much to work with.
I picked this up on vacation, based on glowing reviews from a bunch of bookish YouTubers I follow. I finally finished it today, and all I can say is: I wish I liked it more. I really do. But it just wasn’t for me.
The premise is intriguing—set in a near-future UK, where a government-controlled time portal allows for the extraction of “ex-pats” from various historical periods. Our unnamed protagonist is assigned as a “bridge” (read: babysitter) to one of these time travelers, Graham, a man pulled from an 1847 Arctic expedition. He’s now trying to navigate modern-day London. Cue the predictable fish-out-of-water moments: confusion over bikes, music, city life.
For most of the book’s ten long chapters, not much happens. We sit in this quiet day-to-day adjustment phase, and then—out of nowhere—the final quarter morphs into a spy thriller. It’s jarring, underdeveloped, and over just as quickly as it starts.
There’s so much potential here, but none of it is realized. The time travel element is barely explained. The themes—colonialism, gender, history—are gestured at, then abandoned. The romance subplot pops up mid-way, includes one oddly spicy scene, and then fizzles. The book tries to do too much, and ends up doing very little well.
The prose was another sticking point. The writing is metaphor-heavy—painfully so. Some lines just don’t make sense if you stop to think about them. (“I was a doll, with no more inner intelligence than a bottle of water.” What?) The similes come in fast and weird (“My knees were jumping like a pair of boxed frogs”) and the overall style felt clunky, like it was constantly reaching for poetic but landing somewhere awkward.
Ultimately, I think this needed a sharper editorial hand and a clearer sense of purpose. It could’ve been a thoughtful sci-fi with historical depth. Or a grounded character study. Or even a quirky romance. But trying to do all three in under 300 pages didn’t work for me.
I’m just glad I didn’t save this for my summer readathon—it would’ve been a slog. Two stars because I did enjoy a bit of the ending once things finally started moving, but getting there was rough.
I stared at a blank Word doc for twenty minutes trying to figure out how to review this book. That pretty much sums up the experience: I don’t have much to say because the book didn’t give me much to work with.
I picked this up on vacation, based on glowing reviews from a bunch of bookish YouTubers I follow. I finally finished it today, and all I can say is: I wish I liked it more. I really do. But it just wasn’t for me.
The premise is intriguing—set in a near-future UK, where a government-controlled time portal allows for the extraction of “ex-pats” from various historical periods. Our unnamed protagonist is assigned as a “bridge” (read: babysitter) to one of these time travelers, Graham, a man pulled from an 1847 Arctic expedition. He’s now trying to navigate modern-day London. Cue the predictable fish-out-of-water moments: confusion over bikes, music, city life.
For most of the book’s ten long chapters, not much happens. We sit in this quiet day-to-day adjustment phase, and then—out of nowhere—the final quarter morphs into a spy thriller. It’s jarring, underdeveloped, and over just as quickly as it starts.
There’s so much potential here, but none of it is realized. The time travel element is barely explained. The themes—colonialism, gender, history—are gestured at, then abandoned. The romance subplot pops up mid-way, includes one oddly spicy scene, and then fizzles. The book tries to do too much, and ends up doing very little well.
The prose was another sticking point. The writing is metaphor-heavy—painfully so. Some lines just don’t make sense if you stop to think about them. (“I was a doll, with no more inner intelligence than a bottle of water.” What?) The similes come in fast and weird (“My knees were jumping like a pair of boxed frogs”) and the overall style felt clunky, like it was constantly reaching for poetic but landing somewhere awkward.
Ultimately, I think this needed a sharper editorial hand and a clearer sense of purpose. It could’ve been a thoughtful sci-fi with historical depth. Or a grounded character study. Or even a quirky romance. But trying to do all three in under 300 pages didn’t work for me.
I’m just glad I didn’t save this for my summer readathon—it would’ve been a slog. Two stars because I did enjoy a bit of the ending once things finally started moving, but getting there was rough.