A cosy time-travel story that left me wishing it would take more risks

The official blurb

Cass Patch has a time travel device and a bold ambition to rewrite the past. If she and her girlfriend Mia succeed, altering history will send life-changing ripples sweeping into their present. But at what cost?

Meanwhile Drusilla, the opinionated sprite bound to the time travel device, is stubbornly withholding key facts about the origin of The Infinity Glass and the identity of the mysterious ‘Maker’.

Determined to uncover the truth, and with the past, present, and future all at stake, Cass must work out who she can really trust, why she has a special connection to the time travel device, and what really matters most.

Blending time-twisting mystery, family drama and YA adventure, Patches of the Past will take fans of time travel on a poignant speculative journey filled with secrets, danger and impossible choices.

The Review

There is something inherently exciting about a time-travel story. Give a character the ability to reach backwards into history and suddenly almost anything becomes possible. What would you change? Who would you save? What would happen if you got it wrong?

That was probably why I found Patches of the Past a slightly frustrating read. It has a premise with almost limitless possibilities, but for me, the story itself felt surprisingly reserved.

I wanted more from the time travel

For a book centred around a literal time-travelling device, there wasn’t actually as much time travel as I expected. More importantly, when Cass and the others did venture into the past, I rarely felt the danger or unpredictability that makes this kind of premise so exciting.

The idea of changing history should be terrifying. One small decision could ripple outwards and completely transform the present. Patches of the Past acknowledges those consequences, but I wanted the story to push them further. I kept waiting for that horrible what have we done? moment, or for the characters to make a choice that couldn’t easily be taken back.

Instead, the novel often chooses the gentler route.

That extends to its relationships too. Cass and Mia have a supportive relationship; parents and children listen to one another; people communicate their feelings and generally try to do the right thing. In real life, these are all excellent qualities. In fiction, however, I found myself craving a little more mess.

There are moments where genuine conflict seems ready to emerge- particularly between Lucia and Cass- only for it to be resolved very quickly. Nobody needed to suddenly become awful for the sake of drama, but I wanted these relationships to be tested more severely by what was happening around them.

Who is the YA reader following?

I also found myself questioning the YA label as I read.

The novel moves between characters at very different stages of life: Cass and Mia are young women trying to work out what comes next, while parents, older family members and Drusilla all occupy significant parts of the story.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it left me wondering who the central YA figure was supposed to be. Who is the young reader being invited to see themselves in?

Cass comes closest, but even she felt more like a young adult in the literal sense than the protagonist of a YA novel. With so much narrative attention spread across generations, Patches of the Past sometimes felt more like an all-ages speculative family drama than YA specifically.

Drusilla stole the show

Ironically, my favourite part of the book wasn’t the characters travelling through time at all. It was learning about Drusilla and the origins of the Infinity Glass.

Here was the tension I had been looking for.

Drusilla is bound to an extraordinarily powerful object but has remarkably little control over what happens to it. The Glass can fall into anybody’s hands, and she must persuade its owners to use it if she wants to influence events herself. That imbalance between enormous potential power and almost complete passivity fascinated me.

The history of the Glass, its Maker and Drusilla’s experiences gave the wider time-travel mythology some much-needed texture. I found myself considerably more invested whenever the story returned to this thread.

And then my tea was gone

My biggest disappointment, though, was the ending.

Without spoiling anything, it gave me the very specific feeling of reaching for your cup of tea, expecting another mouthful, and discovering you’ve already finished it.

Oh. There’s no tea.

That’s it?

I genuinely checked because the ending felt so abrupt. There were still ideas I expected the book to explore and emotional beats I was waiting to see land. Instead, the story seemed to stop just as I was expecting its final movement to begin.

Perhaps that’s partly because Patches of the Past belongs to a wider series, but even within a series I want each instalment to leave me feeling that I’ve completed this particular journey.

A gentle approach to a huge idea

Ultimately, I think my experience with Patches of the Past comes down to what I wanted from its premise.

This is a gentle, character-focused take on time travel. Its characters care about one another, talk through their problems and generally approach extraordinary circumstances with compassion. There will absolutely be readers for whom that warmth is the appeal.

I just wanted it to be bolder.

Give me the catastrophic mistake. Give me the relationship that doesn’t survive changing history. Give me someone making the selfish choice even though they know better. Give me the horrible realisation that fixing one thing has broken another.

There are glimpses of something much stranger and more complicated in Drusilla’s story and the history of the Infinity Glass, and those were easily the strongest parts for me. I only wish the rest of the novel had embraced some of that same uncertainty.

I received a free copy of this book via Love Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Find Love Book Tours on Instagram:
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Author Bio

Sian Turner writes spec fiction and is the author of several novels and short-story anthologies in that genre, including the ‘Patches’ YA time travel series. She is a committee member with Hastings writing group Shorelink Writers, and in her free time volunteers at an RSPCA cat re-homing centre. Sian is currently working on the possibility of making her next novel a spec fiction murder mystery. 
Instagram: @SianTurnerAuthor
Website: https://sianturnerauthor.wordpress.com/

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