Jason Ayres

This is the tenth book in the wonderful Time Bubble series, again centred around the life experiences of a minor character who has popped up a couple of times before, in this case Amy Reynolds, who nursed the dying Thomas Scott in hospital in January 2025 in the previous novel, and appeared as a little girl in an earlier novel whom Josh bumped into in 1992. The 39 year old Amy is transported back to the previous December 31st (2023) and after one or two further slipbacks realises she is reliving every 31 December and 1 January (her birthday). Inevitably she tries to change her future, in particular during her 30s by taking revenge on her ex boyfriend Rob who she had caught shagging the next door neighbour, and when they first met trying to get off instead with his much better friend Gary. As her life regresses she tries to tackle more serious problems like stopping her mum drinking herself to death, and rescuing her elder sister Rachel who died in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. As she regresses into childhood, she enjoys the experience of being a child with foreknowledge, while being worried about what will happen before she is born. However in the chance encounter with Josh in 1992, she is able to pass him just enough information for him to eventually put her back on the correct time stream. As much fun as ever, and interesting to see what happens to minor characters and how they were affected by the ripples of the actions Josh and co originally set in train.… (más)

This is the ninth book in the Time Bubble series, centring on life experiences of Thomas Scott, who has been mentioned a few times in earlier novels and who crossed with Josh, one of the main characters. Thomas Scott wakes up in a hospital in January 2025 where he is dying of cancer, his tearful daughter by his side. But after the darkness has closed in, instead he wakes up and it is New Years Eve. It dawns on him that he is living his life backwards. Throughout the novel, his entire life runs backwards, in the middle of the night he slips back a day. This simple conceit fuels what for me is one of my favourite books in this series, full of time travel anomalies, cultural references and unintentional humour and pathos, his technology downgrading with each succeeding year, meeting his wife Sarah for the first time on the day she is killed by a drunk driver, and tearfully saying goodbye to her when he first meets her on a Club 18-30 holiday in Ibiza, meeting his parents on their deathbeds, having to cope with never seeing his daughter Stacey again after she is born, and losing his interest in girls and sex when he becomes a child. He manages to change the timeline to save his wife from the killer drunk driver and his daughter from a sexual assault, and makes lifestyle changes to avoid getting lung cancer. At the end of the novel, he has just been born - and then time starts to go forward. He has, it seems, been given his alternate lifestream where he lives to old age happily married to Sarah.… (más)

This is the eighth in the author's Time Bubble series, and like its immediate predecessor, it focuses on the life of a minor character, in this case Kay, a middle aged woman who has made a series of bad decisions especially in her choice of men and has ended up alone in a decrepit flat over a chip shop run by an aggressive, racist bully. Like Richard Kent in book 7, a guardian angel offers her a chance to relive six days in her life, which she uses wisely to better herself while taking revenge on her ex husband and her first boyfriend. One of her trips is her dream date in 1994 with Richard Kent, as his was with her in his book. She uncovers her husband's crooked business dealings (though with unrealistically convenient ease, I thought) as well as more innocently reliving a childhood Christmas and her first concert, and travelling the world before settling down. More seriously, she is able to solve a local murder of a young Polish girl. I enjoyed this though I would like to see some of the original main cast of characters come back into the plots of this series.… (más)

This is the seventh in the author's Time Bubble series. None of the main regular characters are in this one, it centres on the life of Richard Kent, a disgruntled ex-policeman turned pub landlord, who has turned up in some of the earlier novels. At age 42 in 2018 he is suicidally depressed by the way his life has turned out. A guardian angel offers him a chance to relive six days in his life, from buying his first record in 1984, dating his dream girl in 1994 and attempting to foil a robbery in 2013. It turns out he cannot make any direct changes to the past, though he can learn lessons to put the past in perspective and improve his mental attitude for the future (as well as gaining revenge on some unpleasant types in the process). This was rather different from the other previous novels in the series, though I enjoyed some of the reminiscences of the 80s and 90s.… (más)