This was a total knockout. A genre bending thrill ride from start to finish. The Ministry of Time is Sci fi, dystopia, history, imperial critique, humor and love story all wrapped up in one. I absolutely devoured it.

Bringing people from the past to present for unclear but potentially nefarious reasons; this is a story that begs the question, what does it mean to “only be following orders?” Is it different or the same in every era?

As the novel progresses there is an impending sense of doom that is nearly poetic as the story hurtles towards its end. It’s thrilling, twisty, and heartfelt. I adored it. I cannot wait to bring this into our store as our May Staff Pick!

Thank you netgalley for the advanced copy.

This might be the most unique time travel story I've encountered. I expected more.romance, I expected more spy escapades but instead this was a slow burn, character exploration. The scope, the ambition, the twists (which yeah, I guessed) were impressive. The idea to bring people to the present an explore all that meant from technology to social issues to morals without flinching from heaviness or authenticity and with plenty of emotion stands out other scifi time travel books. The characters were amazing, the book was chaotic. I loved and hated the ending.
In the end, this book is genre-bendy, painful and all over impressive, especially for a debut.

What a fun read! The UK government is reaching back in time to snatch people before they die so they can test what this new time travel tech does to people. And one of the people they grab is an Arctic explorer from the Franklin expedition. He along with a few others are learning about live in the 21st century from their handlers, which is fun in itself. But there there is a little romance, and a government conspiracy, and people from the future come back to change history. What starts off as a fun exploration into time relocated people in the modern era turns into time travel spy thriller. I loved the portrayals of the 'snatched' people from history. This was one of those books I was chatting with people about when I was only partially finished with it. This will be high on my recommendation list to patrons this summer.

This plot was really weird but I actually really enjoyed it lol. I want to ignore the rest of the plot and just get more of the weird sexy lover from another time thing

I did not expect this book to be hilarious , but I definitely laughed out loud at times. It is a genre mix up and definitely not what I expected at all. The characters were the best. I wasn't as into the past history chapters, but they were very short and easy to get through.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC! This book pulled me in just from the title! I am all about a time travel story and this was an excellent time travel story along with a mix of other genres. A great read!

4.5/5 stars
I didn’t expect this book to be so funny, but I was pleasantly surprised. I was literally laughing at every witty and sarcastic comment from Commander Gore. But, apart from being funny, it was romantic, entertaining and heartbreaking, all at once.
This is a work of fiction, but Kaliane Bradley made every character feel so real to me. Everything they went through felt real as well. I don’t think I ever read a book and a story like this one.
It did felt a little slow paced at times, but I still loved it.
I’m genuinely happy that I got to read The Ministry of Time before the publication date. Thank you Avid Reader Press!

Deft relationship comedy in the guise of a time-travel scenario. Bradley has a solid lock on the first aspect, the burgeoning attraction between the Victorian time traveler and his modern-day "bridge" assistant is aromatic, but less so on the second, seeming to lose interest in the plot machinery in the final fourth.

As soon as someone mentions time travel, I jump on it. I can’t seem to get enough. With The Ministry of Time, it was that very element that made me open the book, but in the end, the characters are what completely won me over and are what will continue to take up space in my head. Read in less than 24 hours, I could not put it down. Nor did I predict the twists and turns and deep admiration I would feel for these fictitious characters! This book was utterly charming and very funny at times, but also provided depth with the occasional tearing of my heart. I predict that this title will be in many Best of 2024 lists, and it would be well deserved.

I feel like this was a case of "it's not you, it's me." I just couldn't get into it. It really came together for me near the end, but it was too late. I hope to give it another try at a different time though because it really seems like something I should love.

This tale of time travel and self-loathing starts off as sparkling as a romcom and swiftly devolves into a thoughtful examination of imperialism and biracial identity. In this novel, an unnamed civil servant acts as a "bridge" for a British explorer who has been forcibly time travelled to the modern age. Sparks fly, but so do government secrets. I loved how it defied expectations and genre - was this a romance? was this a conspiratorial science fiction? - while keeping a razor-sharp focus on character and motivation. This book kept me guessing and I adored reading about its flawed, interesting characters.

I was having a fun time reading this and I can't wait to have it on physical in my hands. Truly deserving of areading a incredible debut. Hoping to read more of their projects in the future too!

I’ve read a lot of time travel novels, but this one had some twists that I enjoyed. I like the idea of a secret government ministry rescuing about-to-die people from several different eras and using a mysterious technology to bring them near present-day London. Most time-travel novels’ main characters are the ones intentionally doing the time traveling, so they’re sort of mentally and emotionally prepared to be thrust into an unfamiliar environment. In this book, the “expats” arrive from the 19th and 18th centuries and even up to nearly 500 years in the past. No surprised that it takes quite some time just to calm them down long enough to explain where—and when—they are. Only after that can they slowly be led to learn about the contemporary world and history.

Each expat is assigned a “bridge” to help the expat with their acculturation. The first half of the book is lot of fish-out-of-water and culture-clash comedy. I highlighted quite a few lines here. The chief focus is a young, female bridge who is the daughter of a Cambodian mother and white English father, who is assigned Commander Graham Gore, a fictionalized 19th-century Navy officer who was lost in an expedition to find the northwest passage. The pairing of a modern mixed-race woman with a Victorian-era man is rich ground for humor, but also some food for thought about whether our social attitudes are always more progressive.

Things get serious when it becomes clear that there is a lot more going on than the study of how the expats cope physically and acculturate. Threats from within and without endanger not just our characters, but the future of the world. The second half of the book is tense and emotional.

Note: I don’t understand the people claiming this is a ripoff of the Spanish TV series El Ministerio del Tiemp. Take two minutes to read the description of that series and it’s immediately obvious that this is a very different story.

This is an interesting time travel story that crosses genres encompassing sci-fi, thriller, romance, political commentary and humor. It will get you thinking.

The premise of this book is neat--in the near future, a Ministry in the British government has figured out time travel and have grabbed a few people from the past to see how they do in 21st century life. Each time traveler has a "bridge" who lives with them to get them more acclimated. Our main character--never named--is the bridge for an Arctic explorer, Graham Gore, taken from 1847 and thus referred to as "Forty Seven." We meet other people from 1665, 1916, etc. Graham Gore is an actual figure from history, which is...somewhat disturbing to me, honestly.

I quite enjoyed the writing and the perspective of the bridge, whose mother is a Cambodian refugee and father is a white Brit; she can pass for white, and there's a lot of reflection comparing her and her mother's experiences to those of the time travelers. There's also a neat twist toward the end.

That said. The book is a bit of a mess. It's a time travel story, it's a romance, it's a thriller. It wants to Say Something about race and LGBTQIA and climate change and fascism and and power oppression. Bradley includes conversations between characters about race but there are so many subtle undertones that I just couldn't really grasp what was going on--I'm not sure whether I couldn't get the nuances because I'm white or whether it's just written in too opaque a way.

Reading the book, I was carried along, but after finishing it and thinking about the story, I don't know that it ultimately holds up. Bradley writes that she initially meant the book for friends after developing a crush on Gore and it does kind of show, from a story perspective. I am very interested to see where Bradley goes from here, though, because her writing is excellent and the concept is great.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for granting me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"A time travel romance, a spy thriller, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she'll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering "expats" from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible - for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a "bridge" living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as "1847" or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as "washing machines," "Spotify," and "the collapse of the British Empire." But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry's project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how - and whether she believes - what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley's answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world."

Only seven cigarettes a day? Amateur. My grandmother was three packs!

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC. The Ministry of Time is the most incredible book I have ever read. Kaliane Bradley has such beautiful, rhythmic prose. I just love her descriptions and imagery, they're so unique, fresh, and relatable. The concept of a time travel romance intrigued me, so I had to request this ARC. While the concept is ambitious, I think the author has executed it extremely well. I loved reading about the protagonist's job in the ministry, the parts about being a minority and working for the Empire and also immigration. There is so much depth to this book, yet the plot is never weighed down by it, it never drags. Instead there is a constant subtle tension in the background that ramps up and finally concludes in the most perfect way. I also loved all the characters, the side characters were equally as compelling as the main characters. The romance was beautiful, the sci fi intriguing, and the book was perfectly thrilling in a manner that makes you look closer at the world you live in and the kinds of actions you take. This is probably the best book I have ever seen tackle such complex issues with the weight it deserves but also in an easy to understand manner. I love this book so much and I will instantly buy whatever Kaliane Bradley writes. I highly recommend everyone read this book!

Engaging and witty read with a perfect genre mash-up.
It's a time travel story without a real time travel - characters only deal with the aftermath of bringing someone across time, but we never really go with them to another era. That's because the focus of this book is on showing the corporate side of supervising the adjustment to a foreign world, rather than typical time-jumping related action and themes (although the story definitely delivers on the classical twists in this department). Apart from being simply fun, it also draws deeper parallels between the time expats and real-life migrants in UK and social commentary is precisely what earns my books an extra star.
The romance starts happening only a halfway through the book and Gore is such a charming character, I really enjoyed it, even though I don't read love stories.
In the beginning had some difficulties with the plot structure. The blurb describes this book as part "work-place comedy" and it's on point here, as jumpy scenes really looked like shot changes from a tv show, ending abruptly and in random places. Also, there are many dialogues with no narration, which was an issue, as I often lost track of who was speaking.
But putting this aside, I adored the whole story.
Also, I would like to note that I'm aware of the "controversies" related to the Spanish TV show of the same name and for anyone who actually read this book, and is not simply jumping on the bandwagon of internet hate, it will be instantly obvious that these stories are entirely different and the whole drama is just typical, silly drama for twitter mob.

A sad DNF at around 20% because this one just wasn’t working for me.

This book has a great idea - what if we rescued a whole bunch of people who died in history and brought them to the future so we could test if time travel is real - but it works better as a thought experiment than a novel. There’s a lack of human connection with the characters, who feel like they’re reading a script of what people would say if they were put in such a bizarre situation, rather than like real people living through it. The author also tries to have her cake and eat it to by handwaving the mechanics of time travel (fair enough) but also treating it as a super important experiment where scientists routinely test their subjects physical and psychological state with lots of technical details.

Hopefully this book lands better for others than it did for me.

Thank you netgalley for this e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

I love time travel romance so much; it really gives something I unique to the story that we doesn't see a lot in fantasy/sci-fi romance. But this was just okay. I didn't fall in love with it but I didn't hate it either. I'm not sure why it fell a bit flat for me. I think maybe I just didn't relate or love the MCs as much as I'd hoped.

This book definitely gives outlander vibes, so if you love outlander, definitely check it out.

3.5/5 ⭐