So Close to You: Review

Review:

I didn’t realize this book dealt with time travel when I started reading it (obviously, I didn’t go back and read the summary before I started it), so I was pleasantly surprised. I love time travel which made me enjoy this book even more.

The book begins at and old military base called Camp Hero. There are rumors floating around that there used to be an underground research lab of some sorts below the camp, and Lydia’s (our MC) grandfather is hellbent on finding out the truth behind the rumored Montauk Project. His father (Lydia’s great-grandfather) died there several years ago, and her grandfather believes he fell prey to one of the secret experiments at Camp Hero. There was no body and no one witnessed his death. Lydia doesn’t necessarily believe her grandfather’s stories, but she always enjoys spending time with him, even if most of their time is spent snooping around the old base.

One day while on one of their regular “missions”, Lydia finds an open bunker door (a door that has never been open before) at Camp Hero and decides to investigate. Inside she finds a guy named Wes and when she steps into a room to hide from him, she and Wes are transported back in time to 1944 during WWII. While there, Lydia realizes that maybe she can find out what happened to her great-grandfather, but she has to be careful. If she meddles in the past it will have ramifications on the future, possibly wiping out her existence.

I really liked the story and I really enjoyed spending time in 1944. I liked Lydia, though I didn’t really love her. She is very strong-willed and inquisitive (she wants to be a journalist), and while I appreciate those qualities in a character, I didn’t fully connect with her. After a while her hard-headedness began to wear on me. I also wasn’t a huge fan of Wes. He seemed to be there as someone who had all the answers, yet he wasn’t always forthcoming with them. There was also a major case of insta-love of which I am not a fan. By the end of the book I had mostly gotten past it, but it definitely pulled an eye-roll out of me when the love talk first started.

With that being said I enjoyed the story very much. Ms. Carter doesn’t bog the reader down with a lot of time travel details, yet it still makes sense. I loved the setting, and how Lydia interacted with family members from the past. There’s a really good mystery here which I enjoyed very much. All in all, despite a few personal pet peeves,  So Close to You is a very entertaining read, and highly recommended to history buffs and fans of time travel. This is a series, and I will definitely read the next book to see where the story goes.