The Ministry of Time: A Novel

A milenial gets a new job at the futuristic Ministry of Time, where a top secret project is unfolding where people from the past who would have died in that timeline, are kidnapped from the past and are considered "expats" of history to modern time. These expats are assigned a "bridge" who assist them in acclimating to their new world. The expat is from “1847” and is Commander Graham Gore from the Sir Franklin 1845 expedition that the series "The Terror" was based on. Gore and the bridge fall head over heels in love during this year of "bridging" and make friends with the other expats. There are other past/future challenges because the bridge happens to be from the future, and comes back to make sure that things go smoothly. It's a mind-bender for sure and you'll feel like you need to write everything down with a flowchart when you get to the end, but it was a good read.

This book moved VERY slow, it only picked up/ got interesting at the end. I felt in my opinion there were a lot of unanswered questions, but I guess that was on purpose. An interesting book in the sense you can’t tell who the protagonists are and who the antagonists are at the end.

LOVED this book. A smart, entertaining read!

I loved the backstory of why the book was written (the author’s unhinged obsession with a daguerreotype of a long-dead, very handsome Arctic explorer) and really, really loved the first third or so where Commander Gore and his fellow expats are exposed to modern life. Muppets! Scooters! Spotify! So funny and smart - I had the highest hopes for where this was going… But then it lost me. The main character was annoying. The love story felt forced and weird. The spy/traitor business was very confusing. The big twisty surprise about one of the characters was very lame. It just kind of went off the rails trying to be too many things and lost all of the fun of the first part. Also: I listened to some sections of this as an audiobook and have to say the narrator was not my favorite - the girl voice parts were mumbled and hard to understand and the boy voice parts sounded like when me and my friends imitate our husbands saying something dumb. You have a competent male narrator already booked - use him for the boy voices! I just thank the baby jeebus I didn’t listen to any of the sex scenes on audio bc that would have been horrific.

Interesting read