Review: Loved it!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 18, 2012
I have to be truthful, I am not a fan of time travel in any story."The Time Traveler's Wife" - BORING!"The Outlander" - SNORE!So, when I was first asked to review "The Mine" by John A Heldt I thought, "Oh God! Not another one." Yet, I believe in supporting fellow authors and decided to give it a try. I am so glad I did.The premise of the book is pretty typical for a time travel romance - boy goes back in time, falls in love, and is torn between staying in the past or returning to the future. What makes this book different? To be honest  it's because Heldt is darn good writer. He took typical and made it fresh. It's not as simple as one would think.The very first thing that caught my attention was the amount of detail Heldt put into making the 1940's authentic. Between the 40's baseball stats that Joel uses to win bets, the description of the US getting ready to go to war, and experiencing the simplicity of life from the main character's eyes, you can tell that Heldt did a lot of research. This not only made the story more believable, but it showed how invested he was in creating depth in his fictional world.There was wonderful prose in this book. I reread several passages simply because they made me laugh or they were written so well. The pacing of the story was great. Just when you thought the story would get boring something would happen to liven things up. I also enjoyed watching Joel's inner turmoil about knowing the horrors of Pearl Harbor and World War II were coming and knowing he could not stop it.The romance between Grace and Joel is very sweet. I found myself rooting for them and hoping they would find a way to be together. The ending was certainly a surprise. I didn't it coming at all.Overall, I enjoyed the book. I still don't like time travel, but if you have to read time travel, this is one book that actually does it well.