Time to Burn, Ellery Lloyd (Review by Lara Ferguson)

In a world where commercial time travel has become a luxury for the ultra-wealthy, Time to Burn follows filmmaker Phoebe Hunt as she documents an exclusive trip to London during the Blitz. What begins as a showcase of a groundbreaking invention quickly turns into chaos when the travelers return shaken, injured, and one person short, forcing Phoebe to uncover secrets that connect the past to the present in dangerous and unexpected ways. Ellery Lloyd takes the idea of time travel and creates a story far more gripping than a simple science-fiction adventure. Rather than focusing only on the mechanics or novelty of traveling through time, Lloyd explores the moral and emotional consequences that could arise if such a technology were real, turning the “what-if” into a backdrop for a tense, fast-moving thriller full of danger, secrets, and shifting loyalties. The result is a story that feels both imaginative and surprisingly believable. One of the book’s greatest strengths is the way Lloyd blends this speculative concept with real history. By weaving historical events into the narrative, he gives the novel a sense of immediacy and realism that makes the stakes feel even higher. The past is not presented as some distant, abstract setting, but as a vivid and consequential world that directly shapes the lives of the characters in the present. That connection between history and modern ambition adds depth to the suspense and makes the novel feel more layered than a standard thriller. Lloyd has also built a cast that is intricately connected, and part of the pleasure of the novel lies in watching those connections gradually emerge. The relationships between past and present, truth and deception, are often blurred in fascinating ways, which keeps the reader questioning what is really happening and who can truly be trusted. That sense of uncertainty drives much of the intrigue and gives the book a constant pulse of tension. Overall, Time to Burn is a smart, thrilling, and highly original novel that combines action and suspense with thought-provoking questions about history, privilege, and consequence, a story that is not only entertaining but also unsettling in the best possible way, asking readers to consider how fragile the boundary between past and present might really be.