The Ministry Of Time had prospect and the idea about taking historical figures out of time to the 21st century to see if they can survive is a unique idea. I just felt let down because that idea and chance to create something memorable was not achieved. I felt rather lacklustered and lied to because the first sentence in the synopsis contained the words, "Romance", "spy thriller" and "workplace comedy" and I think my definition of those words are very different from the author's.

With this, the genre for this was labeled as scfi and contemporary. I am letting you know, there is nothing very scientific in this book other than the quick description of "we have time travel!"

There were high praises coming from this book, so this may be why my review so far is coming on very strongly because I did not see where all the high praise is coming from. Let me say that for a debut novel, it wasn’t bad. But it was also not a 4 or 5 star read to me.

To start, the things that I enjoyed with this book: 

- Definitely the idea. Very unique and again, there was a chance to make an amazing story with it

- The potential of our main character (who was never named throughout the book) and her expat Graham Gore (the time traveler). 

- I enjoyed reading about Commandor Graham Gore and liked how this book encouraged me to look him up to learn more about him

What I didn't like and what ended up dragging this rating down is: 

- The writing felt very janky. It felt like nothing was really connected well and I found myself very confused with what was happening at times. Some transitions from one scene to the next were rough

- I love learning new words but I felt like there were too many big and uncommon words used to sound above average. I don't enjoy having to pause multiple times to look a word up and I think I have an average vocabulary 

- The story is mundane. Yes, this is contemporary book, but come on, the main thing with this is there are characters brought from the past! 

- The plot twist wasn't bad but it was badly written and wrapped up

- The ending left me with nothing 

- "Romance" not the strongest 

- "spy thriller" where was the the spying? 

- "workplace comedy" it was as dry as possible 

If you can't tell, I felt very disappointed with this read. There was so much potential with so many ways this story could go that maybe that was the problem. I think I had too much expectation and there were too many possibilities trying to work together that in the end, nothing was really well done.

At the end of the read, The Ministry of Time, is a slowed down, mundane slice of life read with anticlimactic ending.