By Julie Cross, published by Macmillan

“Time will tear them apart…”

It’s 2009, and Jackson has a secret- he can jump back in time and relive moments in his past, and only he and his geeky friend know. Jackson has a girlfriend, the beautiful, blonde hair and blue eyed Holly, and he would do anything for her. When two mysterious men burst in on Jackson and Holly and Holly is shot, Jackson immediately jumps back in time, determined to undo it all. But, when he’s catapulted back, he ends up in 2007. after many tries, Jackson realises that he is stuck, two years from Holly being shot, and can only jump further backwards. Can he work out how to save Holly, whilst he digs up a terrifying truth about his father?

This book was good, but not exactly brilliant. The plot was an original, clever idea, and I really enjoyed it- it was a bit like groundhog day and was fun to read. However, the beginning of the book was so confusing- one minute they were in one place, the next minute Jackson was years in the past- the time travel was pretty hard to grip at first, but I came to understand it after a while. Another thing I disliked was that towards the end, the whole story was taken over with the ‘Tempest’ Time Travel Agency, and I think the whole ‘save Holly’ thing was kind of dropped. 

Bad stuff aside… The character of Jackson was a real adventurous one, and he had a well developed personality and background. I liked the character of Holly, too, but I wish it would have gone more in depth to her background because I didn’t really get to know anything about her except for the fact that she had an overprotective mother. 

Overall, I quite enjoyed Tempest. It was thrilling, with some cool plot twists and I liked the romance side of things, too- how Jackson kept falling in love with a past versions of his girlfriend Holly – it was a real twist on a teenage love story. It’s great for sci-fi fans!