I need to preface this review by explaining that I’m a big fan of Steve Howrie’s work having read all of the novels in the Time Leap trilogy. I was delighted to discover that the first Time Leap Novel “Date Me” was now available on Audible.
Actually hearing the story being narrated by a veteran audiobook narrator like Graham Mack is a wonderful thing. He does a great job of bringing a diverse array of characters to life which helps to flesh out nuances in the story that I missed the first time I read it. Listening to the Audible version allowed me to connect with the work with fresh ears. Time Leap: Date Me is all about what happens when a couple of perfectly ordinary people find they have the ability to Time Travel. Joe is a financial advisor and Nikki (his Chinese wife) works in book distribution. A lot of the drama in the first half of the book revolves around Joe and Nikki’s efforts to prevent terrorist attacks. However, as they gradually come to terms with their newfound power they become more ambitious in their goals as they try to stop World War 2 and prevent a nuclear holocaust in the future.
In order to carry out tasks that require a skill set that neither Joe nor Nikki possess, the couple enlists the services of Smirnoff, a Russian hitman. Howrie writes Smirnoff as a rather sardonic character that grows way beyond the cliche he so easily could have been. Smirnoff really grew on me and is the standout character in Time Leap. I hope Howrie one day gets around to writing a spinoff Smirnoff series called “Plenty of Time to Kill”. The dramatic potential for a story about a time-travelling hitman would be tremendous!
In the later stages of the book, Joe and Nikki are driven firstly by the altruistic desire to prevent the death of the “people’s princess” then they start on time travel tourism in earnest and head to ancient Egypt which turns out to be very different from what they had imagined. After some more time travel in ancient China, they take there first big jump into the future.
This is a consummately well written and highly inventive book recommended for fans of sci-fi and time travel!