Invictus by Ryan Graudin

His whole life's goal was to become a certified time traveler.  He's excelled at everything.  He just has his final exam to ace to achieve it.  But someone has sabotaged his sim and he fails.  He can't fail but he did.  Now he has no hope of being a legal time traveler.  But he gets a note about a second chance...

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers sent me an ARC of this book to read for review (thank you).  It will be published September 26th.

His second chance is to become a time traveler in the black market trade. You travel back to the past and retrieve artifacts that were destroyed by an event just before the event happens.  He agrees because his mother was lost on a time travel expedition and he wants to find her if it's possible.  The money he will be paid for facing the dangers to get the treasure will give him the opportunity to look.

This is the first book I've read by this author and she has certainly caught my attention.  She weaves a tale so successfully that I didn't want to put the book down and didn't want the story to end.  That's a good author!

He soon has a team he trusts and a woman he loves.  But time travel can be confusing and difficult.  It doesn't help when you run into another time traveler who's after the same item you are.  She also has some secrets she's not telling him.  

There's tension, insecurity, lost love, and more all intertwined in this story.  The movement between the past and the present continues swifter than ever.  Even discounting the human factor and that they want him dead, he also has to worry about the way times and places are disappearing.  It's called the fold and it eats everything in its path.  To overcome that, they will have to do something that has never been done before.  It's fascinating and it has a great ending.  From great despair, hope arises.