Rating: 3 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
While Cody Callahan is a survivor, it comes at a price he had no interest in paying. In his early 20s, Cody’s already outlived everyone he has ever loved and his memory is filled with holes and his life is filled with trauma. Then, Cody is transported back in time to the days of his past to relive the nightmares he has tried so hard to forget. They are memories of his first love and memories of being kidnapped. Now, if Cody has a choice, he will change the outcome.
Detective Jack Vance was the detective on Cody’s old case. But Jack doesn’t believe that Cody is now from the future. Cody believes that anyone that gets close to him will meet a terrible fate, but Jack wants Cody to take a chance with him. As the men race against an impossible clock to save Cody and his friends, Jack has to wonder what will happen as he falls in love with a man from the future who might be out of time.
Lost in the Past is the debut book from author Trent Allen and it has an interesting storyline. I do like to be kept off balance sometimes while reading and this book does that well. The story opens by introducing Evan and Benji and we learn about their tragic relationship. We then meet Cody and Jack, and Cody is the narrator going forward for most of the book. But who exactly is Cody?
Everything about this book is best read in the moment and explored as you go. Cody has a tragic story and is all alone in the world with the exception of one close friend. We get a good understanding of what Cody has gone through, but because of the way Cody is introduced, he’s not a fully grounded character and the story is murder mystery set around a time travel storyline.
While I liked the overall story here, I found the writing style difficult. The dialogue is often awkward, forced, and feels juvenile. The text also suffers from too much repetition; all of the characters said “Gawd” too many times and it feels like the main characters in every scene were blushing, flushing, having their cheeks turning red, or some other variation on the same theme. It lost what I assume was the intended effect and came off more as them all having an uncontrolled medical condition.
The time travel portion of the story was also lacking in detail. Both Cody and Jack have identical pendants that react to each other, but that’s all we know. There is no detail to the time travel; Cody just travels to his past and there was not enough built into this to make it work. Cody and Jack do form a relationship and that does play into the story.
The story did hold my attention as Cody’s journey progressed, but the overall structure of the book itself would have benefitted from a stronger content edit to pull it together better for me as a whole.
