A historical time travel novel (historical figures and future events) with a slow burn romance that just grabs you by the feels once that match takes.

My thanks to Avid Reader Press and NetGalley for the ARC of this e-book.

The Ministry of Time was a beautifully written, fresh and intriguing take on time travel, bureaucracy, oh, and <spoiler> total environmental collapse/the fall of society as we know it </spoiler>. Victorian propriety thrust into the 21st Century is something I never knew I needed and I realized early on this book is one that I will be thinking about for a long time.

I take issue with this book being classified as romance. It is speculative fiction, a time travel thriller, which happens to have elements of romance. There’s no definite <spoiler> happily ever after </spoiler> to be had, or at least not in a timeline the reader is privy to.

I had no idea until the afterword that Graham Gore was a real person and I’m not sure how I feel about this variety of speculative work being written about a person who actually existed.

Giving this book a spice rating feels inappropriate - it contains open door sex with euphemistic or vague language.

Many thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Despite finding the premise interesting and having read other time travel books, this one just did not work out for me.

I found the writing style and language tedious and oftentimes confusing. It was just overdone. The character development was really lacking for me, especially that of the narrator. There was also zero chemistry with the two main characters. I really struggled with the first half of the book as it was very slow and not much really happened. It picked up the second half, but ultimately, just didn't hold my interest.

This novel will sit with me for a while as I turn it over in my head. The premise immediately grabbed me and I quickly began to compare it to the book equivalent of the “imagine explaining Gaylors to a pilgrim” flavor of meme. It is funny, and after I got through the first bit, fast-paced while maintaining great tension. I loved the romance and sci-fi combination. The cast of characters, most importantly our leading man, are endearing and witty. I struggled at times with the narration — it felt dense and disorienting but I suspect a reread would allow me to focus more on the writing style, which was beautiful when I let myself appreciate it before hurrying along to find out what happens next. Overall, a wonderful debut that I will be recommending as soon as it’s published.

Also, I rewatched “The Holiday” right before starting this book, so I couldn’t help picturing dear Graham as a darker-haired Jude Law — would recommend.

Thank you to Netgalley and Avid Reader Press for an ARC copy of “The Ministry of Time” in exchange for an honest review.

I needed this to be in different hands as it was conceptually wonderful but carried out incredibly poorly.

The Ministry of Time is a lot of things at once, as evidenced by the marketing byline: romance, space opera, work place drama. I think what it fails to convey (and therefore affected my overall impression) is that this is primarily a comedy. Coupled with the fact that this is written by a debut author, I found myself disappointed in the writing. I don't think this necessarily makes it a bad book, just a common case of a book being slightly over-hyped and therefore marketed towards the wrong audience. Not my cup of tea but I can see how it would appeal to readers of the genre.

I never wanted to stop reading this book, and I’ll definitely recommend this book, especially to people who like engaging and slightly suspenseful yet humorous novels.

*Received a free copy from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

What a great premise! I loved the idea of picking relatively unknown people from history and propelling them into the current day. The beginning of the story - seeing these people acclimate to the modern era - was great, if a little tedious and slow. The second half, where the action picked up, was less compelling and (oddly, given the entire premise) seemed contrived. I was invested enough in the characters to finish the book, but I left the second half thinking, "So what?"

What a weird little gem of a book. It was sweet, complicated, and, although I wish the ending was more fleshed out, gave me something deeper to think about. I.enjoyed it & can’t wait to see what else the author comes up with!

📕I was so right to be excited about this book. It’s a marvelous combination of romance, sci-fi, and dystopian fiction. Time travel? Check! Climate problems? Check! Smut? Check! Twist and turns that will make you go “whaaaatttt?”? Check!
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📗Civil servant was selected to be a chaperone of an expat. This expat was not like your usual one, coming from another country etc. He was coming from another time and civil servant had to make sure at the end of one year of chaperoning, this expat would be ready to live in the current time. Was it that simple though? Why did they even bring these expats in? Why only these people? What was the end game? At the end of this book, you are gonna have more questions than this civil servant (and I meant it in a good way)
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📘”Loyalty and obedience are fostered by stories. The Ministry and its satellites were staffed by people who believed they'd smoke one last jaunty cigarette in the eye of a gun. The truth was that we were shackled to the idea that the orders were good and the job was good. Keep calm is just another order like Shoot that man or Delete the rest. We carry on.”

A mixture of moments that were, at times, poignant, laugh out loud funny, metaphysically interesting, or just kinda gross, the Ministry of Time manages to be all of these things without every really coalescing into anything.

This was one of my most anticipated reads, and it did not disappoint. It also sent me down a rabbit hole of researching its historical references, which is always a good sign.

This speculative time-travel thriller romance is narrated by an unnamed British civil servant who has recently been promoted from translating to working as a ‘bridge.’ She’s been assigned to monitor and assist expat Graham Gore, an actual historical figure who died on a doomed expedition to the Arctic in 1847 but has been transported through time to present-day London.

I was so caught up in this book, devoured it in a day. The characters are well-developed and witty; the story is an absolute page-turner with a twist I did not see coming. It was so fun to speculate on what an 1800s explorer might research when shown the possibilities of the internet, or listen to when given access to Spotify. The ending of the book was a little chaotic, but overall it gets an overwhelmingly enthusiastic rec from me.

Thank you so much to Avid Reader Press and Netgalley for this ARC to review!

A really interesting premise and story told in a complex and werid and wonderful way. Slow in parts but still worth a read. 3.5 🌟

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

The Ministry of Time is a slow burn time travel romance with a bit of a spy/thriller twist. The story is told from the main character/narrator's perspective as she embarks on a new assignment as a "bridge" for an "expat", which is just a fancy term for a handler for a time traveler plucked from the past. Those that have been chosen for the experiment are individuals who would have died in their own time period, therefore taking them to the future would have no impact on past events. Our narrator's expat is a Captain named Graham Gore from a polar expedition in the arctic where all of his men, himself included, starved or froze to death. Along with additional quirky characters who now reluctantly find themselves in modern day London, they must find a path forward to live with their new circumstances.

Although interesting and well written, the first 60-70% of the book mostly centers around the narrator and Gore's living arrangements and getting to know one another. There is not a whole lot of action and each chapter has a flashback to Gore's life just before he was pulled from his time. The last quarter of the novel moves fairly rapidly and is generously spicy and takes on more aspects of a spy novel than a time travel centric literary fiction.

I found the book overall to be enjoyable, but I feel like the relationship between the narrator and Gore could have moved at a bit more than a glacier's pace even with the arctic time travel theme. I am not sure other readers will have the same level of patience as I have and may quit the book too early before the satisfaction of its ending.

Thank you to NetGalley, Avid Reader Press, and Kaliane Bradley for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

The premise of this book was really exciting -- a time-travel romantic thriller with workplace shenanigans and commentary on modern life -- but in reality the story was mostly a quirky and semi-tragic romantic drama with two unlikely leads: Graham Gore, a nineteenth-century Arctic explorer, and the unnamed narrator, a mixed-race linguist very aware of her family's difficult history with colonialism.

I struggled with the formatting and lack of copy-editing in the e-ARC I received. Margins were erratic and sections were demarcated by a asterisk with no line break. Segments of dialogue were often missing paragraph breaks, attributes, even end-quotes, making it difficult to tell who was speaking and where their speech gave way to narration. These are small and easily correctable issues - but their frequency and severity in this document impeded my reading experience.

I loved this inventive novel, a wonderful and thought-provoking meld of genres. Graham Gore is the hero promised--charming, sly, surprising, but the supporting characters and other emigres were a welcome surprise. Offers a little of everything to a wide readership--highly recommend!

This author has a unique way with words. Her unusual descriptions paint an interesting picture, but her tendency to frequently use words that most people would never see outside of studying for the SATs pulled me out of the story a few times. I like to think I have a strong vocabulary, but I've never had to use my Kindle dictionary as often as I did while reading The Ministry of Time. Aside from that, I really enjoyed this story and all its eccentric characters. This is exactly what I look for in a time travel book. It has multiple genres blended into one, and the ending will make you question everything you thought you had figured out.

This would make an excellent choice for book club discussion. If you are not a fan of romance as a genre, don't let that part of the description scare you away. There's a lot more to the story. Lately, when I have picked up a book that promises a "time travel romance" I have been severely underwhelmed by the time travel portion of the plot. I went into this worried that might be the case here, but The Ministry of Time really delivered a well-researched and terrifying "what-if" scenario that I would happily return to if the author decides to bless us with any sequels and/or prequals.

I'm glad to have ended 2023 with a great read! I'm also glad I sat with it for a minute before writing a review, becasue time has tipped the scales from 4 to 5 stars. I was completely taken with the main characters, the sense of found family that emerged, and the underlying mystery. I loved the way Gore's flashbacks were stitched throughout the modern story. And the mixing of genres — from sci-fi to romance to spy thriller — really worked for me. I was left unable to stop thinking about these characters, their triumphs and their flaws, and the varying paths their futures could take long after I finished reading. Check this out if you like time-travel stories!

This was very different from what I was expecting but overall enjoyed reading it and found it very unique.

Thanks Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC

The Ministry of Time takes place in a near future UK where our non-named narrator works as a “bridge” helping a refugee, Captain Graham Gore, from 1847 integrate into the present world.
I’m sort of at a loss on how to review this book. This book is so many things; a futuristic (and sort of hard to understand) dystopian tale, a beautiful love story, a staggeringly heartbreaking exploration of identity. It took me about half of the book to really get into it but I flew through the back half. It is a wild and very entertaining but also very confusing (like most time travel stories, honestly) story.
The writing is beautiful. There were at least four sentences I wanted to underline for their truth and poignancy and I never do that. The story is interesting and highly propulsive once it gets going. This book is definitely original and worth reading.
Thank you to Netgalley and Avid Readers Press/Simon and Schuster for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.