(3.5 / 5)

When investigating tales of a ghost sighting, the Cooper family--dad Jacob and teens Jay and Lila--find themselves caught up in a mystery 100 years in the making. A woman who'd been accused of killing her husband out of greed 100 years in the past was killed while escaping her punishment, and now her ghost is being seen around the ruins of the long-abandoned town.

I spent the first third or so of this book completely flabbergasted. The beginning of the story was such a departure from the previous books in the series, I was certain it was going to turn out that something else was going on. But when it became clear that Jacob's friend Mac's theory about a gravity vortex causing time and space to go wonky was actually what was going on, I struggled to accept it and move on. Eventually, I reminded myself that it's not necessarily against the theme of this series of books. Sometimes there's not much suspension of disbelief to swallow, while other times, God-attributed supernatural events occur.

With that understanding in mind, I can view this book a little differently than I did while listening to a lot of it. The story, then, with the vehicle of time travel in place, becomes about solving the mystery of the legend, finding out what really happened 100 years ago. And that itself is a good story. The kids follow along as the story is told in the past, while their dad and his friend try to sort it out in the present time, and it's interesting how it all plays out. I won't say there isn't some predictability to it, at least to an adult reader, but I think the age group its meant for won't have read as many mysteries or seen as many TV shows or movies as adults have, making it more fresh for them. I again enjoyed listening to the audiobook and would say that, though it may seem outlandish at first, it's a good story overall and worth reading if you're interested. ( )

I reread this book before passing it on. I remember reading this book for the first time that I felt the author was stretching the bounds of science in using a gravitational flux explanation for time travel. I'm still not convinced all these years later that it's a solid explanation for the plot.

Other than that, the plot is fairly well written though there are a few cases where I wondered if the author was just trying to fill pages to get the book to length since some ideas are repeated, but overall, the story held my interest and kept me reading. ( )

"awesome"