Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Heroes for Ghosts
SERIES: Love Across Time #1
AUTHOR: Jackie North
PUBLISHER: Blue Rain Press
LENGTH: 246 pages
RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2018
BLURB:
Soulmates across time. A sacrifice that could keep them apart forever.
In present day, near the village of Ornes, France, Devon works on his master’s thesis in history as he fantasizes about meeting a WWI American Doughboy.
In 1916, during the Battle of Ornes, Stanley is a young soldier facing the horrors of the battlefield.
Mourning the death of his friends from enemy fire, Stanley volunteers to bring the message for retreat so he can save everyone else in his battalion. While on his mission, mustard gas surrounds Stanley and though he thinks he is dying, he finds himself in a peaceful green meadow where he literally trips over Devon.
Devon doesn’t believe Stanley is who he says he is, a soldier from WWI. But a powerful attraction grows between them, and if Stanley is truly a visitor from the past, then he is Devon’s dream come true. The problem is, Stanley’s soul wants to finish his mission, and time keeps yanking him back to relive his fateful last morning over and over, even as his heart and body long to stay with Devon.
Will Stanley have to choose between Devon and saving his battalion? Will time betray their love, leaving each alone?
REVIEW:
His friends are dead, their radio is broke, and the Germans are coming ever closer. Stanley, a young American solider stuck in the trenches in WWI France, knows that death is coming. Be it by bullet, blade, gas, or just bad luck…his time is running short. But if he dares to attempt the perilous trek through the trenches, to get back to where command is stationed and receive the retreat codes, his battalion might be lucky enough to survive the incoming German army. Luck is a funny thing, though, swinging both ways. Because while his scramble through the trenches is cut short by an unlucky gas canister, he finds himself waking up a hundred years later. Not dead–or maybe he is?–and taken in by an American graduate student who is studying the very battle that cost Stanley’s whole battalion their lives.
I had said when I reviewed Honey From the Lion that I’d probably get around to reading the first book in the series at some point…which I did. I just needed a little reminder of it, so when we got the request to review the third book in the series, Wild as the West Texas Wind, (which I did a few days ago HERE) I decided that it would be a great idea to finally read this book. Luckily enough, Heroes for Ghosts, unlike the other two books in the series, is a complete stand-alone story, and so it didn’t really matter what order I read it in.
Despite several elements that in the past have not worked at all for me (jumping back and forth in the timeline being the big one) this book ended up being crazy good. And those things I normally don’t like, I didn’t mind at all in this story. I want to say this was my favorite book in the series, but I remember loving the second one as well, so maybe Heroes is winning by sheer fact of having read it more recently. Either way, this is a great story.
One of my favorite things might be that you never get any kind of real guess or explanation for why Stanley gets to go through time. He isn’t all that special, there is no time machine, no gods, no aliens…he just happens to luck out. I loved the randomness of it. Some things don’t need explanations. I felt, also, that it really complimented the whole undertone of this book that some things just happen because they do. Especially in war. His friends didn’t do anything to die other than sit in the wrong spot. Stanley’s battalion just had the rotten luck of having their radio stop working so they couldn’t retreat, thereby causing them all to still be there when the German soldiers arrive. And Stanley himself just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when that gas canister went off. Some things just happen, and you never know why. The idea isn’t exactly hammered over your head during the story, but I felt the impact nonetheless.
I think the only thing that drew me out of the story more than I liked was Devon’s constant use of the word Doughboy when he first meets Stanley. I didn’t mind it the first few times, for some reason the constant repetition felt jarring the longer it went on. I think it might be that I haven’t really heard that term before (at least not that I readily remember) so it didn’t fade in the background as the term “soldier” does. My eyes were drawn to it every time it appeared on page and so it was harder to skim over like with more common vernacular. Actually now that I think about it, I had the same problem when Devon got to talking about the various parts of Stanley’s uniform that I have never heard of before. The not knowing what he was talking about made it hard to picture the scene and forget I was reading. These are not huge problems, but they are probably why this didn’t end up being 5-stars.
If those are the only things I can complain about, though, I think I can rightfully say that this was a very good story. A bit too sweet at times, but I think that is exactly what it was going for, so I can’t fault it too much. I’ve had a lot of fun reading these books. Each one has handled the time-travel aspect so well. I can’t help but heartily recommend this, and the others, to lovers of time-travel, or just good romances that have some very interesting twists in them.
RATING: 
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