First, I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this chance to read an e-ARC of this book.

This book is perfect for me as it resembles my favorite thought experiment. When I have a minute to daydream I often wonder what it would be like to be the last human of our time explaining our culture and history to a bunch of futuristic people. How would my life, experiences, skills, etc. impact what and how I shared? What would be preserved and what would be lost because of the limited scope of one human brain? The only thing my thought experiment doesn’t have is a romance plotline, So if you like a bit of romance I highly recommend you read this book rather than listen to me babble on.

In the Ministry of Time, we journey with our nameless protagonist, a civil servant recently inducted to the highly classified time travel project. At this ministry, men and women are pulled out of time, at the moment before their deaths, and brought to modern times where they will be observed for any side effects. This will later inform the feasibility of future time travel missions. One such person is Graham Gore (a very real person in history), who died in 1845 during a deadly expedition to the Arctic. It is our protagonist, who is assigned to be his ‘bridge’, to help him acclimate to modern times. However, as I alluded to, eventually the lines between subject and handler blur, in all the best way, and yes there is spice if that is something you enjoy.

This book was a lot more than I expected. It was packaged as a romance, spy thriller, but it feels a bit deeper than that. There are things we don’t consider, in regards to time travel, but would be very apparent if it ever did happen. The world does not look the same as it did 30 years ago, let alone 100+ years. With that comes having to explore different values and societal roles and challenges to the elasticity of the human mind. I enjoyed the exploration of these themes, though I did wish we got more of the fluff and hijinks of being displaced in time before getting down to business. I just think it would make everything hit harder.

Not to say I wasn’t in Spain (without the s) by the end of the book. I know it was theoretically hopeful, but something about it just went right through my heart and after I was done I was just sitting on my couch wondering what to do with my feelings. I think it was a very realistic fact that we may try our best, love people, and fight for people we love, but we are still small parts in such a big story. All you can do is struggle accept what happens, and hopefully lean on people to move forward when it’s not quite enough.

Ugh! This book is going to live in my brain forever, isn’t it? I just want our protagonist, Graham, Arthur, and Maggie to be happy and have a guaranteed happy future. Is that too much to ask for?!?!

I found the synopsis of this book intriguing when I found it in Netgalley. I have read many time travel romances and find the differences in the ways of life of the characters the best part. In that respect, this story does not disappoint.
Nonetheless, it is a very unique and peculiar book. The author establishes the plot in the near future London, a time when time travel is possible but not mainstream. It is created a Ministry to deal with this capacity and an experiment is made bringing to the current time a group of people from different times from the past. The idea is to make sure that is physically possible and without permanent damage. The people chosen are rescued in their final moments to make sure that history is not changed. Each one of them has a bridge, an agent from the ministry that will help them get settled in the new century.
The main characters are an English linguist with Cambodian heritage and an arctic explorer from the navy who presumably died in 1847. The first part of the book is dedicated to them navigating his inadequacies to the current time.
The second part is much darker and introduces some characters from the future and we learn that there is much to fear in that future. Climate change is a real threat in the plot and without saying much more about the plot, I must warn the readers that this becomes more of a scy-fy thriller than a romance novel.
I enjoyed it but I must say that the story had a much higher degree of anxiety than your familiar time-travel romance.
It is very well written, and for a totally different experience, I would surely recommend it.

It's a mixed bag for me. There is so much going on that the focus becomes pretty hazy.
The storyline contains time-travel, mystery, history, murder, sabotage, comedy and romance. There is also a good bit of commentary on race and women's discrimination, which I'm not sure was necessary to dvance the story.
That said,the good parts are memorable. The two main charachters have a whitty rapor, which is entertaining. The group of individuals known as the "expats" also have memeorable friendships that read well. However,the idea of these people from the past assimilating to present day life so quickly was a bit far fetched for me.
Perhaps a more narrowed,streamlined focus would have helped make this novel more appealing,at least for this reader.

This book was a bit if a feminist update of Time Traveler's Wife, with a dose of Dr Who and DC's Legends of Tomorrow. I liked the premise, and the story was a good ride. Recommend to history buffs and scifi needs alike.

Genre-bending, fiery, and darkly reflective, The Ministry of Time asks pressing questions like "what will we do for love?" and "what does it mean to uphold empire from within its mechanisms when you are also marginalized by it?" and also, crucially, "what if the British government time traveled real life historical figure from the Franklin Expedition Graham Gore to the 21st century?"

I was completely drawn into this book, and boy is there a lot to unpack. Our unnamed narrator is a funny, unreliable, and blunt underqualified civil servant, who is telling us the story of her year as a "bridge," helping (and falling in love with) one of the British government's newly time traveled "expats"—a handful of people brought to the 21st century moments before their deaths—adjust to their new time. She feels painfully real, and very well-realized. Bradley's writing style is captivating and gritty, and created a creeping sense of foreboding that followed me through the novel and didn't leave when I'd put it down. This was a book that had me staying up late to finish it, and left me staring at the ceiling metaphorically chewing on everything I'd just read for a long time afterwards.

A time travel romance, a speculative spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingeniously constructed exploration of the nature of truth and power and the potential for love to change it Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

This was nothing short of spectacular and I'm going to spend the rest of 2024 being completely obsessed with this book. This novel really goes through all the genres - it's a science fiction, a love story, a comedy, and a spy novel. I laughed, I swooned, I cried. I certainly never expected to fall for an 1800s Commander, but I sure as hell did. And now I'm completely and utterly bereft that it's all over. I did not expect anything in this book and that made it all the better. Ultimately, this book is SO much fun (and a little sexy okay?)

It is a truly beautiful thing to stumble into your new favorite novel.

I adored this book. It's fun, thought provoking, and has some of the most breath catching prose I've ever read. I often had to sit and just stare off into space after reading some lines.

A romance disguised as a science-fiction mystery; this novel has everything! It has time travel, secret government agencies, dreamy artic explorers, subterfuge, discussions of colonialism and race, and band of unlikely friends you cannot help but fall deeply in love with. We follow the narrative of our MC describing her assignment as "bridge" to 19th century English naval lieutenant, Graham Gore, who has been rescued--my means of a Time Door-- from the doomed Franklin Expedition through the artic. Our MC is tasked with helping Gore adjust to life in the present day, part of a covert government project. Against her better judgement, our MC falls irrevocably in love with him. But all is not fair in love and time travel, and while our MC and Graham figuring out love in the 21st century, sinister forces are at play to change the course of time.

One of the most exciting debut novels of the year. This novel is a brilliant take on time travel. It is a story that will stick with you. Also, this book is written with wide range of vocabulary. I felt smarter after reading it.

It was very good. The pacing was very good, and I liked the retrospective building sense of tragedy. The last 45 pages were amazing.

This was really fun and clever! I usually find it hard to get into books regarding time travel, but the author made this really intriguing and enjoyable.

Man, this is a hard one to review. I definitely thought I was going into a rom com about a hunk who gets pulled into the future and all the hijinks that would ensue. While there was some of that, this was way more spy thrillery than I expected. Lots of suspense and high stakes action.

I loved the travelers and the little family that they formed through their trauma bond. I liked that there were important issues being discussed. The plot definitely kept me guessing. I think I just wanted a little more from the ending. Overall, this was an interesting read. Not a rom com, more of a character driven spy novel. There were slow bits, but it came together nicely.

I don't know exactly what I was expecting. But this book was MUCH more than all I've expected. While time travel is a component to it, it's a lot more lit fic than sci-fi. While the MC is observing a time traveler, it's fascinating to get to notice how much of the observations are internal reflections. It's also a very interesting look at identity. I have been thinking about it since I finished this one, and I might just re-read it!
I definitely recommend reading this one with someone, just to discuss the details.

Thank you so much to Avid Reader Press for the ARC of this one.

Thank you to Avid Reader Press for the early review copy of The Ministry of Time.

This is one of the quirkiest books I've read recently and I loved it. Honestly, this could be a perfect pick for a book club because there are so many elements to dissect and discuss. Sometimes this reads as a historical narrative about a doomed polar expedition in the mid-1800s, other times it's a fast-paced spy novel, and then there are the parts that read as a love story.

The Ministry of Time is a small government entity tasked with studying the impact of time travel. By wrangling "expats" from different historical periods and bringing them into the present, the ministry can observe the physical and emotional impact that time travel has on the human body. Each time the ministry brings a new "expat" into the present timeline, they are assigned a bridge - someone who is expected to live with and observe the behaviors of the "expat" in their new environment. Our main character is the assigned bridge for Captain Graham Gore - a polar explorer who perished on Sir John Franklin's expedition to find a Northwest Passage. Disoriented and surprised to find himself in a time very unlike his own, we watch while Gore acclimates to a life where modern marvels such as "Spotify" are commonplace in everyday life.
Over the next year, Gore and his bridge forge a connection that will be tested in ways they never could have imagined.

I loved this book - I found the parts about the failed Franklin expedition to be incredibly interesting and loved how Bradley brought this historical character to life in the present. As our main character begins to uncover the true intentions of the ministry the novel shifts into a tightly wound spy thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat. Overall, this is one of the most memorable books I've ever read and I can't wait to see what this new author does next.

A striking and entertaining blend of fast-paced and philosophy and time travel, that explores mixed-race identity, inherited trauma, and Britain's imperial legacy.

It's been a long time since I've read something this original and this inventive. I LOVE the way that Kaliane Bradley sees the world - as a writer, her description is so surprising, the details always so sharp, so exciting. Very very stylish stuff.

Okay, onto the book itself. Strange and exciting and weird and imaginitive and funny, and FUN! And also sexy. Yes, I do now have a debilitating crush on Commander Gore. If you want to read this/sell this as predominantly a romance, you absolutely can. Great dialogue, excellent tension... some popular writers of romance fiction could do with taking notes. As a romance lover, the central relationship is - for me - what made the novel really sing.

But there's plenty going on here, and all of it interesting. This is a novel about time-travel, about expatriation, about writing the diaspora. It's about the mundanity of bureacracy, it's about the insidiousness of bureacracy. It's sly, and disarming - but also forthright, and charming. It's giving its readers lots to think on, but it's not afraid to withhold answers and complicate conclusions.

4 stars because I really enjoyed this book, but I'd be hesitant to describe it as 'satisfying' - I think a lot of readers will find the ending too abrupt, and perhaps a little confusing.

I’m apprehensive about time travel, but when it’s done right, wow is it so much fun. This novel sits somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between Connie Willis’ Oxford Time Travel Historians and Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This is How You Lose the Time War. I absolute sped through it once I got started, compulsively propelled along by the plot and the characters.

By turns funny, sad, sexy, thrilling, and swooningly romantic, this was an absolute joy to read from start to finish, just completely charming. I can’t wait to recommend it to friends and customers alike.

hmmmm not sure how to put this one into words? it was a bit too weird for my taste, but I was interested enough to finish it out

I found the tone of this book to be very reminiscent of Jodi Taylor's The Chronicles of St. Mary's, which is a big positive in my opinion. I began this book thinking that it would be a mostly fun, light read, and I did in fact find myself smiling a few times throughout, but I also found that the overall themes were darker and more reflective than I expected. While leaning into the more serious questions of time travel, Bradley still manages to create a charmingly amusing dynamic between the main character and Commander Gore. That being said, I would not classify this as strictly romance, as there isn't a clean-cut happily ever after.
Side note, Commander Gore reminded me a lot of William Laurence from Naomi Novik's Temeraire series.
I would definitely recommend this book to readers interested in time travel and the ethics of time travelers, especially if they enjoy Jodi Taylor.

The Ministry of Time is an outstanding romantic thriller. The main female character is a Biracial British Cambodian translator for the British government who has just been promoted to a new job. The British government has obtained a time machine and used it to bring to the future 5 people who were going to die. Their fates were already documented so their removal from the past would not affect history. With her new job as a Bridge, she must help Graham acclimate from the past to the 21st Century. Commander Graham Gore was part of Franklin's Expedition to the Arctic in the mid 1800's.

The story is beautifully written and told and the author does not rush in the telling of the story. As might be expected with a man from Graham's time period, all aspects of everyday life but especially romance have changed. The author honors that difference nicely. I also feel that the author has blended many genres into a lovely cohesive narrative. The story covers many topics including colonization, slavery, inherited trauma, genocide, and more. While there is a underlying time travel element, the book is set in the present day and thus it conveys a commentary on the past. The dialogue is smart and I have nothing I could compare this story to.

Thank you NetGalley and Avid Reader Press for the advanced review copy in exchange for my honest review.

Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. Thank you, NetGalley and publishers.

The Ministry of Time is a sci-fi thriller, combining time travel, spy capers and much more. What if the government discovered a way to pull people through time? What would happen to those people? What would our world be like to them? Our main character is assigned to shepherd one of these people, Lt. Graham Gore of the lost Franklin expedition. This one was a lot of fun.