Hello everyone!
I'll often start something but then end up getting distracted and sort of forget that I have other books in the series to finish off, or the series will putter out and my interest in it will fade exponentially, which means that, yes, I still don't have everything finished which I might have started reviewing on here.
BUT.
This one is now officially wrapped and man, was it a good read. I highly, highly recommend it if you're looking for some dystopia, good, strong leads, and steamy romance all at the same time.
Rebecca Hefner manages to capture all of that and more in this trilogy of hers and I honestly can't WAIT to pick up another book of hers because she's definitely one of those writers you can read again and again and again.
It's probably why her books are currently still resting on my e-book shelf as opposed to getting deleted right off the bat.
A Timeline Restored, the final book in the Prevent the Past series, is up.
You'll find links to the first two books and their reviews down at the bottom of this page, but if I do a very, VERY brief recap of what's already happened, here's the deal:
in A Paradox of Fates, we meet Lainey and her team of scientists in a world that was nuked to oblivion by her grandfather, and her job is to build a time machine to go back to 2035 and stop him before he can do it. In the process, she falls in love with Captain Hunter, and learns that they've all been in a time loop, doing things over and over again and never actually succeeding.
In A Destiny Reborn, Claire and Cyrus, two members of Lainey's team, are chucked even further back in time than they originally planned, and end up investigating the Knights of Washington which led to the establishment of the New Establishment, the people who nuked the planet, and they also establish themselves in that timeline, using their time and knowledge of the years to come to their advantage with investments, and having two children who will play a role in the grand showdown.
And it is here, people, with A Timeline Restored.
As you can probably tell from the title, the ending is something you can definitely guess, but I doubt you'll see it ALL coming, so here we go.
After Lainey and part of her team manage to travel back to 2035, Eli Hernandez, the dictator of the New Establishment - and secretly a spy recruited by Lainey herself through time travel who's trying to bring down the order from within - storms the facility to prevent one of his other men from doing so, but in the process Alora, one of the combatant members of the team, kills some of his men so the other four can escape, but she lands in prison.
She doesn't trust Eli as far as she can throw him, because he was there on the day his father murdered her family in cold blood for not wanting to join the New Establishment in what used to be Colombia, and she has blamed him for their deaths ever since, despite the fact Eli has saved her life on multiple occasions afterwards.
Eli's fine with it - he knows that his life is forfeit and he has come to terms with the fact there is no place for him in the restored timeline Lainey's building after the atrocities he committed to become the feared leader he is today. But he does know he'll save Alora if it's the last thing he does, which ends up being by marrying her so that Tanner, the other counterpart in this leading business, doesn't shoot her outright.
Eli argues that her heritage and her family's previous position will help them secure what used to be South America with a more peaceful approach, and while Alora hates the very idea of being tied to him in any way, she also sees some logic behind the decision, especially when he tells her that he will stage a diversion for them to be able to go and track the remaining team themselves.
The diversion works and they take off, but Tanner learns of Eli's deception and sends soldiers to cut them off, who they run into when they finally catch up to Sarah, Marie, Zach and Elle, and Eli now knows he's been compromised, but they need to get to the Sphere any way they can to join Lainey and the others.
They succeed in doing so only for Tanner to surprise them with an attack during which Alora gets shot, but Lainey and Hunter arrive with their own mini Sphere, and Alora begs Eli to come with them, so he carries her through the wormhole back to 2035.
Once there, the planning escalates since Lainey explains that the New Establishment knows they're in a time loop just as much as they do, but for some reason are allowing them to continue with their planned trajectory, so there's no use second-guessing at this point.
They blackmail several Secret Service agents into helping them on the night of the gala during which they'll be sneaking into the White House, and the plan is set for them to hopefully stop the president and then time travel out of there to 24 hours afterwards.
Eli and Alora also explore the passion between them which had been building for years during the time they've known each other, but they only act on it now in 2035, as Alora has slowly learned more and more about the enigmatic, deeply scarred figure of Hernandez Jr., whose father used to beat him if he showed any emotion so he carries the marks to this day.
But when he asks, almost begs, Alora if there's even the slightest chance she might believe he could be a better man after it's all over, and thus maybe build a future with him beyond just the physical release of sex, she turns him down on the grounds of holding him responsible for the death of her family, which effectively has him cutting himself off from her in the process afterwards, with both his heart and pride deeply wounded.
This doesn't stop the team from going in, but things definitely go haywire in the bunker beneath the White House where it's revealed that Victor Hernandez, Eli's father, isn't dead after all but has somehow been hiding out in time (?) and he doesn't care about the paradox he created by speaking and touching to his younger self, who's also there, not to mention Lainey's grandmother Alice, revealed to be the driving force behind the nuke detonation, and not her grandfather, the dark horse no one had really factored into any equation.
Thankfully, Claire and Cyrus' daughter works as Press Secretary and (while also saving the team on numerous occasions before-hand) gets Elle into the bunker; the girl reveals herself to be Victor's bastard daughter and shoots Alice, and both of the Victors, which effectively breaks the stalemate.
POTUS promises not to detonate and the team scrambles out of there, but Eli refuses to go with them, giving the FBI and Secret Service a scapegoat to blame, especially since Alora still refuses to give him an inch.
But with the timeline now restored, the team remains mobile for a little bit before splitting up to go to their new lives, with Lainey and Hunter poised to still look for a young Eli so that, in case something happens, they still have an ally in him, and the rest of them taking off as well. Cyrus and Claire's other child, a son who happens to be a police officer, also comes in clutch as he pulls a favour for his sister by taking Eli out of prison and setting him free to do with his new life what he will, saying his parents bought a boat and he could go there if he so chooses.
He does, and that's where Alora eventually finds him, though he isn't willing to talk much, explaining to her that he doesn't feel like having his feelings walked all over one more time so she can go right back where she came from and leave him be, he'll be fine. She, however, reveals that she's pregnant with his child and does in fact want him in her life, so they decide to see what the future has in store for them, together.
The team finally reconvenes, all of them together, a few years afterwards, with an aged Cyrus and Claire, who is dying from cancer; Lainey is writing a dissertation on 'theoretical' time travel while Hunter works as a chef at a local winery restaurant; Luke and Sarah live in San Diego with their children; Zach and Elle, who have a lovely romance in this book, are mobile in an RV and loving life; and Eli and Alora have a daughter at this point in time.
Marie, their fearless cook and mother figure, has finally passed, and they all gather to read her final letter of farewell, thinking just how lucky they are that they managed to finally, FINALLY, succeed in restoring the timeline, so now they can all relax.
And in a house somewhere, a young Victor Hernandez examines an arrowhead a lady gave to his son Eli, wondering what's so important about it, eventually deciding he's going to investigate until he figures it out - just as Eli muses that, if he were his father, he'd make sure there was a backup Sphere somewhere to use, regardless that they've supposedly destroyed all of them.
DUN DUN DUN!
So with that little cliffhanger indicating there MIGHT be more cooking, but also leaving you wondering just how the heck a Victor Hernandez can even exist since both of them were killed by Elle - probably showing that the paradox of speaking to yourself creates a copy of you somewhere? I'm not entirely sure, it's a mystery, and a really, really good one! the story closes.
It's divided neatly into two halves, one which focuses mostly on Eli and Alora (with the traipsing group making its way to the Sphere), and then the other where they join up with the rest of the team and the showdown commences.
The first half shows us a lot more about Eli, who has remained more or less an enigma throughout despite the fact Lainey is the one who recruits him, but his reputation as sadistic dictator precedes him and makes him hard to trust, even if once we get to know him better we see that he loathes himself more than anyone else could ever possibly hate him. This creates a dynamic character with many, many layers who we get to interact with, and I'll say he's right up my alley so I love him dearly.
Alora is a trickier one for me. She's a sort of mysterious figure who comes and goes from the Hub during the previous installments, supplying them with things from outside and doing reconnaissance to keep them all safe, and we finally learn more of her own personal history in this one, how Victor killed her family in cold blood, how Eli intervened to spare her own life (at the cost of a brutal beating afterwards), and how she and Eli have interacted since then in the interim years, usually with him somehow beating her to somewhere and making sure she isn't there when the soldiers arrived so that she survived.
However, her character is coloured with a whole lot of pride which rubbed me the wrong way, because while I could understand her logic in blaming Eli, the convenient scapegoat who had nothing whatsoever to do with her family's death other than being there, there are other things she does during the book that turned me off her.
Other people tell her that blaming Eli doesn't really hold water, considering he was just as much a victim of circumstances as she, and while it's understandable that kind of turnaround from hating his guts might take time, you think, as a reader, she might have done that once she enters into a sort of relationship with him, but what happens is that her pride at considering herself better than this man gets in the way. She turns him down flat ... and then gets annoyed because he doesn't give her any attention whatsoever afterwards, thinking he should at least acknowledge she looks pretty.
You pushed him away, lady, you can't have it both ways; he's not going to pant after you if he knows you don't want him!
On top of all that, he isn't asking for her forgiveness - he himself acknowledges that, while not guilty of her family's murder, he's done enough other terrible things to be exactly who everyone says he is, and he accepts that - but he does ask her for a chance to turn everything around, which she again denies him, so he pulls away and cuts ties with the group he never felt like he belonged in anyway, because his tie to it was mostly through Alora.
And then the final straw, for me personally, is when she comes to tell him she's pregnant, getting angry with him for not giving her what she wants, aka a fight, and not playing along with a scenario she wrote up in her head (which he knows nothing about because he's no mind reader, obviously) which includes him repeating he loves her, THEN she can tell him she loves him, and reveals her pregnancy. In fact, she goes so far as to admit to herself she'll have to beg, and she hates it, which shows that the character beats are all off and Alora is doing what she is for all the wrong reasons.
She shouldn't expect Eli to offer her anything after the way she treated him - but for some reason she still places herself higher than him in this ranking which immediately has her assuming he'll kowtow to her wishes and demands, and when he doesn't react, it pisses her off since her plan is off. Also, her assumption that HE should be the one to say he loves her again first is way off base. He'd already done it, and she rejected him, so her pride once more comes into play, thinking he'll humble himself before her just because she showed up.
And that last bit. The fact she hates what she has to do makes it abundantly clear, if the rest of the conversation doesn't yet, that this is all about her. She has the audacity to demand that he not lie to her, something he'd already given her way back when - in fact, he went above and beyond but she was the one who wanted to force his hand so that she could then paint herself as the one who came on top. Back to the begging bit - yes, she does have to beg. But again she doesn't do it for the right reasons. She does it to get it over with, she hates it, but she never acknowledges that she HAS to do it because SHE was the one who hurt HIM and SHE needs to put on a show of faith so Eli knows he actually has something to come back to.
Instead, she paints herself into a martyr which doesn't suit her and leaves a sour taste in my mouth because she's so wrong for Eli on that level, despite the fact they have chemistry and he's somehow in love with her even through it all. She never actually apologizes either, and it's almost like he has to do it one more time, which is bizarre to me since HE HAS DONE NOTHING WRONG OTHER THAN LOVE HER.
I'll stop now because I could write a full on thesis on this, but OVERALL I enjoyed the conclusion of the story, I thoroughly enjoyed having the team come together to finally work the problem, and I sniffled through the epilogue and Marie's letter. Aside from my hiccup in this book, the series serves up a plethora of strong characters, female and male included, briefly touches on the pandemic, and ends on a note that leaves you wanting more.
Hefner writes a tight ship, her chapters are concise and to the point, and she manages to tug on your heartstrings along the way, too.
I mean, just look at Elle and Zach. I didn't touch on them in the main body of the text but they are adorable, and it's a nice role reversal in which he's the virgin but she's the one who used her body for money; their story also includes some much-needed frank discussion between partners about sex, STDs, and other things like that, which was refreshing to see because it usually gets skipped in romance books.
The time travel is physics I still know nothing about, but hell if this didn't seem real to me, and the stakes were deliciously high. I thoroughly enjoyed racing against the clock with the team to stop the POTUS, and hopefully you will, too.
Just don't mind Alora on her high horse. Then you'll be good to go.
10/10 recommend!
xx
*image not mine
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