Publishers Weekly
01/04/2021
Jones (the Hibernation series) gets his latest series off to a rocky start with this half-baked time travel story. In 1997, 14-year-old Joseph Bridgeman attends a funfair in Cheltenham with his sister, seven-year-old Amy, and the outing turns tragic when Amy vanishes while Joe is momentarily distracted. Twenty-two years later, Amy’s disappearance still haunts Joe, who holds himself responsible for failing to safeguard his sibling. Plagued by insomnia, and with his finances and living situation in peril, Joe seeks out hypnotherapist Alexia Finch for help. He gets more than he bargains for, however, when her treatment somehow allows him to travel back in time. After using this newfound power to win a lottery and stabilize his life, Joe realizes that he can also use it to return to that fateful day in 1997 and keep Amy from harm. Jones’s characters accept time travel with unusually little hesitation, straining credulity, and the ultimate twist will be unsurprising to many. This is an easy one to skip. (Feb.)
Kirkus Reviews
2021-01-13
A man with newfound powers of time travel strives to harness his energy to save the sister who’s been missing since childhood.
In the summer of 1997, Joseph Bridgeman took his little sister, Amy, to the local fun fair. While he was trying to win her a prize, she vanished, never to be seen again. In 2019, Joseph still has not entirely recovered. Nor has his family, his father having ended his own life because he couldn’t bear what happened to Amy; his mother’s in a home with vascular dementia, never sure who’s who or where she is. Joseph has managed somewhat better. His ability to feel energy and communicate with objects amounts to a special power. But although he has one of Amy’s hair ties, his power is more a sidebar than the main attraction. An insomniac with all-too-little communication with money, Joseph isn’t sure what’s next in life until his accountant, Martin, refers him to a hypnotherapist to help him at least get a full night’s sleep. Kind, warm, and not particularly woo-woo, Alexia Finch isn’t exactly what Joseph expects, though he hadn’t known what a hypnotherapist does and still isn’t sure when he leaves her office. He feels calmer but not much else—until that night, when he goes back in time. He’s back in the present before he can understand what happened, but when he does, he’s sure he’s found the key to saving Amy. Will it be that simple?
Time travel with all the humor and none of the pesky paradoxes.
