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maeclair's review
5.0
If you enjoy stories that employ overlapping timelines, you’re going to love Extra Innings.
Joe McLean is eking out a life as a CPA for a company he detests and going home every night to an empty house after a divorce. Most of his enjoyment comes from meeting his older brother for dinner or visiting the old baseball stadium he’s known since childhood. When the stadium is set to be torn down, Joe wangles things to purchase a stadium seat from the company doing the demolition. What he imagines as a nice piece of memorabilia, turns out to be much more—the seat can transport him through time.
Suddenly, he’s able to go back and alter the road bumps in his life—the job, his divorce, his family life. But flirting with time does not always bring the desired results. Change one aspect of the past, and the ripples can play havoc with the future. It’s a hard lesson to learn and Joe is soon moving through several timelines, past and present, doing clean-up duty as decision after decision has him hopping timelines to achieve his image of the perfect life.
I’m not quite sure how the author managed to keep all the details and timelines straight in his head, but he did an amazing job of weaving them into an intricate web. This is a fascinating look at time travel. There’s danger, double crosses, corporate mergers, mob deals—you name it, and you’ll find it woven within this complex puzzle of a novel. The main character is constantly jumping through hoops of his own devising. He’s an everyday guy who just wants the best out of life. The ending was a surprise, and I have to single out the section with Jabba/Kenny as one of my favorites in the book. The descriptions were laugh-out-loud funny. An engrossing read!
Joe McLean is eking out a life as a CPA for a company he detests and going home every night to an empty house after a divorce. Most of his enjoyment comes from meeting his older brother for dinner or visiting the old baseball stadium he’s known since childhood. When the stadium is set to be torn down, Joe wangles things to purchase a stadium seat from the company doing the demolition. What he imagines as a nice piece of memorabilia, turns out to be much more—the seat can transport him through time.
Suddenly, he’s able to go back and alter the road bumps in his life—the job, his divorce, his family life. But flirting with time does not always bring the desired results. Change one aspect of the past, and the ripples can play havoc with the future. It’s a hard lesson to learn and Joe is soon moving through several timelines, past and present, doing clean-up duty as decision after decision has him hopping timelines to achieve his image of the perfect life.
I’m not quite sure how the author managed to keep all the details and timelines straight in his head, but he did an amazing job of weaving them into an intricate web. This is a fascinating look at time travel. There’s danger, double crosses, corporate mergers, mob deals—you name it, and you’ll find it woven within this complex puzzle of a novel. The main character is constantly jumping through hoops of his own devising. He’s an everyday guy who just wants the best out of life. The ending was a surprise, and I have to single out the section with Jabba/Kenny as one of my favorites in the book. The descriptions were laugh-out-loud funny. An engrossing read!
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