Tempest Blog Tour: Review and Giveaways

Title: Tempest
Author: Julie Cross
Publish Date: January 17, 2011 by St. Martin’s Press
Synopsis:

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.
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There are three things that make me love a book: a smart protagonist, a believable romance and time travel. As I read Julie Cross' Tempest I kept thinking, "Did Julie write this book just for me?" No, I really did. For me, the best part of any time travel story is looking forward to how the author will solve the "changing the past will affect future events" issue. And Julie answered it in such an elegant way that I just kept sitting back and smiling. OhMyEverything is it ever brilliant.

This book is made to be devoured in one to two sittings. I couldn't stop reading because I wanted to discover, alongside the charmingly credible Jackson, who the good and the bad guys were and then just when I had my bearings, I experienced Julie's artful blurring of those options. Don't the best stories have that -- options that aren't clear?

I have to admit that I love the sidekick characters. They are well developed and serve more than one simple function. Adam, Jackson's Dad and Courtney popped off the page full off surprises. They made me laugh, want to scream out loud, cry and hold their hand (in truth, I wanted them to hold mine). The scenes between Jackson and Courtney, in particular, stayed with me long after I closed the book. Think of it, what if you could go back and change something you said about your brother or sister or, better yet, to them?

As for the romance, it doesn't get any better than this. I kept thinking what if I had run into my husband two years earlier than we originally met, would the attraction still have been there? Julie presents this with such clarity that I could easily distinguish between 007 Holly and 009 Holly. And you know, I loved  her as much as Jackson.

I'm not going to tell you any more about Jackson. Let me just say that he makes my Top Ten Fictional Boys list. Yes, the list that includes Jace, Will, Jem, Archer, Ash, Michael, Cassel, Cole. Need I go on? You get the idea. To say that I'm waiting for next year's sequel is to underestimate my level of patience and excitement. I am anxious, worried and I could be screaming (a little) on the inside at the mere thought of finding out what happens next. No, I swear I haven't consumed too much caffeine. My reaction is a direct result of reading Julie's perfectly timed ending.

Don't wait, pre-order Tempest now (Barnes and Noble, amazon), add it to your goodreads to-be-read list or just enter the giveaways below, because we have TWO ways to win your own copy.

Thanks to Fine Print Lit and Thomas Dunne Books, we're giving away a finished copy, fill out the form here (our usual giveaway rules apply).


And because we’re participating in Books Complete Me/Once Upon a Twlight Blog Tour, you have a chance to win one of five copies using this form.

Here’s our exclusive quote from Tempest:

September 16, 2007 (12:30 a.m.)
     “I can’t feel my legs,” I mumbled before collapsing onto Adam’s bed. I lifted my hand in front of my face, turning it over, expecting it to fade away or turn transparent. Then the spinning blue and red turned black, along with everything else.
    

Tomorrow, enjoy the last stop of the Books Complete Me/Once Upon a Twilight Tempest Tour by checking out the post on Girls in the Stacks.







My Over All Rating: