Just One Damned Thing After Another - Jodi Taylor

[goodreads]

Title: Just One Damned Thing After Another (The Chronicles of St. Mary #1)
Author: Jodi Taylor
Genre: Sci-fi
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 334, Audiobook ~11hrs
Date read: March 2018, April 2022

Behind the seemingly innocuous façade of St Mary's, a different kind of historical research is taking place. They don't do 'time-travel' - they 'investigate major historical events in contemporary time'. Maintaining the appearance of harmless eccentrics is not always within their power - especially given their propensity for causing loud explosions when things get too quiet.

Meet the disaster-magnets of St Mary's Institute of Historical Research as they ricochet around History. Their aim is to observe and document - to try and find the answers to many of History's unanswered questions...and not to die in the process. But one wrong move and History will fight back - to the death. And, as they soon discover - it's not just History they're fighting.

Follow the catastrophe curve from 11th-century London to World War I, and from the Cretaceous Period to the destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria. For wherever Historians go, chaos is sure to follow in their wake....

4.5 stars. It lost the last half star because of all of the INCESSANT foreshadowing. It's one of my biggest pet peeves in literature. Fortunately in this case the foreshadowing usually happened just a few pages ahead of the event, so I could cope with it, but it still made me roll my eyes HARD every time. It is such a cheap trick, and I wish authors would rise above it.

Ahrem... *cough*... aaaaaanyway...

That minor nitpick aside I absolutely LOVED this book. I had begged for recommendations of good books on FB and this was one of the suggestions. It sounded intriguing and came cheap on amazon (and free on GR... but I didn't discover that until afterwards :-P ) and it absolutely delivered. It had me hooked from the very first chapter and fortunately the rest totally lived up to the promising beginning. Time-travel done well is one of my favourite genres, and when it is combined with historical fiction (much in the same way as Connie Willis) I'm totally sold.

The book had great characters, twists and turns galore, lots of lovely snark and a visit to the Cretaceous Period to boot - what's not to like?

As a book to get me out of my reading slump it was a total success, and kept me up till far too late in order to finish. Awesome :-D