Travel through time with Julie Cross’ ‘Tempest’

“TEMPEST,” by Julie Cross, Macmillan Audio, Jan.17, 2012, (ages 14 and up)

Imagine closing your eyes one second and opening them the next, only when you open your eyes you’re in a different place and time.

That’s what’s happened the first time Jackson Meyer jumped through time. Now 19, Jackson is pretty much a normal college student — aside from the whole time traveling thing that is. Jackson has a girlfriend, goes to classes and works as a day camp kids counselor.

There’s only one person who knows about Jackson’s “gift.” With the help of his friend Adam, Jackson has been testing his abilities. He can only jump back in time and nothing he does changes the future. For the most part, it’s a harmless jaunt. For the most part…

Turns out the jumping wasn’t completely harmless. By making frequent jumps, Jackson has unwittingly attracted the wrong kind of attention. It all culminates when two men burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly. There’s a struggle, and Holly is fatally shot. While Jackson mentally freezes, his other reflexes don’t and he jumps back two years. And this jump is different. Jackson finds himself stuck in 2007, and he can’t return to save Holly. He’s going to have to stay where he’s at, but that doesn’t mean he can’t start preparing for the inevitable…

“Tempest,” by Julie Cross, is told from Jackson’s point of view and as such is narrated by a man, Matthew Brown, for the audiobook. Matthew does a great job of capturing Jackson’s naïve and sort of arrogant tone early on and his subtler and maturing personality as the story progresses. Overall, Matthew does a great job with different voices throughout the novel, with some exceptions. His personification of a few of the female characters felt a bit stereotypical and over the top. While I found this annoying, it wasn’t too distracting to quit listening.

The part that almost had me stop listening had nothing to do with the narration or quality of the recording, which is very good. What had me questioning if I should finish was the use of profanity. I generally don’t use it in my everyday life, so the F-bomb repeatedly coming through my speakers was not only a surprise but grating as well. In part because I read so quickly, I have trained myself to almost ignore profanity in books, but while listening, there’s really no way to know when it’s coming. For some people this is a minor or nonexistent issue, but for those who are more sensitive to language — consider yourself warned.

“Tempest” reads or — in the case of the audiobook — sounds like a Hollywood popcorn movie. And that’s both a good and bad thing.

While there’s plenty of action and dramatic moments, there’s also a lot of jumping around in “Tempest.” And not just Jackson jumping through time, there’s also flashbacks of certain events. It can get confusing. And my guess is that it’s even more confusing when reading on the page rather than listening to an audiobook where the narrator denotes change through pauses and changes in timbre.

I enjoyed “Tempest” but I didn’t finish it feeling wowed. While some elements felt fresh, others felt like a rehash of books, TV shows and movies I’ve already forgotten. I liked the story enough to be glad I listened, but not enough to listen again.