An Ocean of Minutes

As I am a big science fiction fan this book was perfect for me. I loved the plot and the time travel aspect of it, and the descriptions were so vivid that I truly ‘lived’ the story with the characters. A definite page turner!

Polly and Frank are planning to get married when Frank falls prey to a pandemic flu virus. His only hope of survival is a treatment which will only be given if Polly agrees to embark on a one-way journey 12 years into the future. They make plans to meet up once Frank reaches her timeframe. Things start to go wrong when Polly is transported 17 years into the future instead and this book follows her through anguish, despair, hope, misery and so much more, all in her desperate quest for her loved one.

I loved this book. I guess it’s both dystopian and post-apocalyptic although my knowledge of these areas is extremely limited. Given that I have always tended to avoid books in these categories I was amazed at how much I enjoyed this one. It really is a great novel – a great premise, a well-conceived plot, good characters and an element of suspense which lasts throughout. Part of me couldn’t wait to get to the end to find out what happened and the other part didn’t want to finish because I wanted to keep reading it forever. Polly’s state of mind is captured perfectly and I found myself inhabiting her world (which was not actually a very comfortable place to be) and living her experiences alongside her..

So were there any negative points? Certainly none that affected the pleasure I had in reading the book. I’m not at all sure that I got my head round the whole concept of the time travel. As this is a fairly fundamental aspect of the plot it seems slightly bizarre that this lack of understanding didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book at all. But it didn’t. I suspect my failure to fully comprehend is nothing whatsoever to do with the way the book has been written but stems entirely from the fact that I am not a regular reader of science fiction and just don’t have the background knowledge to visualise how it all works. If I’m being really hyper-critical I suppose the book was a bit long-winded at times and could possibly have been a little shorter – but then I would have reached the end too soon!!

I can’t praise this book highly enough and would thoroughly recommend it. I will certainly be looking out for more by the same author. Well done Thea.

This is a very nice plot driven story about a very nice romance but it's also a time travel story and a story about migration. It's also about nostalgia, grief and love. There's quite a lot in there. The romantic relationship is put to the test early on and as a result Polly time travels into the future leaving Frank to catch her up in real time. The main thrust of the plot is whether Frank and Polly will ever meet up again and if they do how their relationship will have changed as a result of the time difference between them, which actually kept me reading to find out.

In the course of them finding each other (or not!) we experience life with Polly in her dystopian future which could have been a hard hitting metaphor for people trafficking but somehow stayed a little bit watery. I'm not quite sure why it felt watery because the situations described are unpleasantly realistic but I never quite got transported from my armchair into the dystopia, hence only 3 stars. Maybe it's because some of the events in the story felt like narrative devices to keep the plot moving in the required direction rather than realistic events in line with the characters and their situations.

Overall I enjoyed it but in an easy, unchallenged kind of a way. Our book group received pre-publication proof copies in exchange for honest reviews and I'm keen to find out what the others think of it. There's certainly a lot in there for us to discuss!