🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

How much of our future is beholden to our pasts? The people we are — our perceptions, ideas, beliefs, and thoughts — how are they first developed, and then enacted, to create our eventual futures?

This mind-numbing book examines all of this, and more, in a crazy, twisty, often humorous, look at time-travel, British bureaucracy, espionage and yes, love, all bundled together in one clever, complex narrative that, if you are at all like this reader, will have both your head spinning and your heart all aflutter.

When a mysterious “Ministry” branch of the British government somehow lays its hands on a time-machine, our first person POV narrator, (unnamed, and herself a biracial survivor of inherited trauma) is selected to act as a “bridge” — performing a sort of guidance and support role for an “expat” traveler who will be brought into the present from the year 1847.

The experiences of this expat, Graham Gore (along with four others, each with their own “bridge” ), will experimentally provide guidance to the Ministry on the physical and psychological limits or possibilities of human time-travel.

Exactly how Graham, our hero, in the form of a handsome, charming, curly-haired Arctic explorer, (a fictional mash-up of the real-life explorer, who played a role in the tragic Franklin exploration) will come to terms with his brand-spanking-new-world, (along with his potentially steamy relationship with his ever-so-watchful “bridge”), makes for an incredibly engaging read.

Without giving any more of the plot away, (no spoilers here), it’s clear that the hype that has built-up around this story is very well deserved. This book literally begs to be read (pun intended) – and perhaps more than once. It is that good — that unique, that tricky, and absolutely that delightful.

A great big thank you to #Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.