Tempest by Julie Cross

Title: Tempest (Tempest #1)
Author: Julie Cross
Publisher:  St. Martin's Griffin
Release date: January 17, 2012

Rating: 4 / 5

Buy it at: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

Prequel to Tempest here or B&N
Read an excerpt here

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.

I was eager to read Tempest since last year, so I sign up on the tour at LBT, and at last I could read it, I didn´t like it as much as I was expecting maybe because I started reading Tempest with high expectations, I'm not saying I did not like, I do like it. It just not covered my expectations, I was debating on the rating between 3.5 - 4 and in the end stayed at 4.

As the synopsis is more than informative, I will focus on the characters. Jackson is a 19 years-old, he comes from a wealthy family and he discovers that he can jump in time and with the help of his friend Adam (a genius) begin to experiment with his skills and write a diary about it. And so far Jackson has only been able to jump a couple of days in the past and not in the future. Holly is Jackson girlfriend they had been dating for a few months and she´s shot to death during a struggle between Jackson and a stranger. After the shots Jackson jumps into the past and is trapped in it.

My favorite character of the book is Jackson´s twin sister Courtney who died years ago, but once Jackson is trapped in 2007, he can not jump to the future but he can jump to the past, so we get to know Courtney and she´s an adorable little girl . Others important characters in the story are Adam, Jackson's best friend and confidant of his secrets and Jackson's father, who also has an important role in history.

Tempest is the first book I read about time travel, so it was a bit confusing at first, to be able to jump back in time and change something that has no impact on the future, with Tempest I had to forget all the stereotypes about time travel to understand the story. Tempest is a book that you have to pay close attention to details, they may not be relevant at that time but then they will be at the end.

In conclusion, I liked this Tempest and I want read the second book in the series - Vortex and see what will happen with Jackson.

Book trailer