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Tuesday, April 1, 2014

BOOK REVIEW: Time After Time, by Wendy Godding

She has died countless times before, and she is not going to let it happen again.
Abbie Harper dies just before her eighteenth birthday. It has happened before, more times than she can remember — and always at the hands of the same man. Her dreams are plagued with past lives, cut short.
But this latest dream feels different. Her past life as Penelope Broadhurst — an English pastor’s daughter in 1806 — keeps bleeding into her present life in ways both sinister and familiar. As Penelope meets and falls in love with the dashing Heath Lockwood, so too does Abbie meet the brothers Marcus and Rem Knight. One wants to love her; the other to kill her.
Time is running out for Penelope, but as Abbie mourns her inability to change the past, she chases the slim chance to save her future. To survive, she must solve the puzzle of an ancient love story…and Penelope just might be able to help

There's a lot to like about this book. And a lot that needed some help. 
The Good:
  • I liked that Abbie is a strong female character who stands up for her principles when challenged.
  • I like the 2 story arcs--Abbie's and Penelope's and how they were intereconnected.
  • Relevant to nothing, but I LOVED that Abbie's part time job was at the local library.
  • I really liked the reincarnation premise. 

The not so good:
  • Abbie was a bit too self-absorbed. Everything she did screamed "look at me" but then she didn't want to be looked at. Choose one.
  • Abbie's reactions to people were just a bit over the top at times. (LIke talking about a teenager slitting other teenagers throats. Why?)
  • I didn't like how the reincarnation premise was presented. Well, more how it was a "well, obviously these dreams indicate I've been reincarnated" presentation. Maybe I needed more backstory--why'd Abbie decide it was reincarnation and not just an overly active imagination/dream life involving historical settings? (I ask this because I've regularly dreamed I'm IN the story I'm reading--so there's a lot of Tudor England dreaming in my world.)
  • I didn't appreciate her Aunt Meredith (her guardian). She wasn't a central enough figure in the story to be so involved with making Abbie "normal." I didn't get the impression they were close enough for her to make that judgement.
It's not a bad read, but reads like a first novel (since I can find almost nothing about this author, I don't know if it is a first or not). I feel like it needed more polishing to be a great read.

What do you think??

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this ebook galley from Escape Publishing through the netGalley publisher/reader connection program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

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