Tuesday, December 18, 2012

The Mine by John A. Heldt

Title: The Mine
Author: John A. Heldt
Publication Date: February 2012
Length: 306 pages

The story starts in the year 2000. Joel Smith is about to graduate from university, and goes on a road trip with his friend. On the way home through Montana, they stop at an abandoned gold mine, so that Joel (a geology major) can check it out. When Joel comes back out of the mine, it's 1941. His friend is gone, his phone doesn't work, and his money can't be spent.

Remarkably quickly, I thought, Joel accepts that he's stuck in the 40s, and begins to build a life for himself. By helping out a guy being beaten up outside a bar, he makes a new friend, who helps him find a place to sleep and a job.

(I'm going to say things that seem negative now, but you should know that they didn't really sway me much. Everything else was so good that I didn't really mind!) There were times when Joel's actions seemed absurd to me. He would talk about not wanting to mess up the timeline, particularly when he met his own grandmother. Yet he seemed only to care about his own timeline. He dated, affected other people's relationships, etc., seemingly without thinking about the consequences at the time. I mean, he was resigned to living his life in that time, so it wouldn't really have been possible for him to not affect anything. It just seemed a little hypocritical is all.

I loved the romance aspect of this book. I'm not a romance reader by any stretch of the imagination, but I can definitely appreciate a good love story in the right context. This one was beautiful.

As it says in the blurb, when an opportunity comes along to possibly get back to his time, Joel finds himself faced with a tough decision, between returning to his time, leaving the love of his life behind and breaking her heart, or staying in the 40s and probably having to go to war. Right up until very close to the end I was kept guessing, and really didn't know how things were going to end. I was worried for a bit that I wasn't going to like the ending. But then the ending came, and I loved it. I can't tell you any more without spoiling it. You'll just have to read it.

5 stars. I now have renewed hope for independently published books!

Full disclosure: Free copy received from the author.

1 comment:

  1. I'm always curious about time travel books. Glad that it was good enough to ignore the annoying parts.

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