Review: Mariana

Mariana
Susanna Kearsley
Time Travel Romance
Corgi Books/1994
Reprinted/1995, 2009, 2012

The first time Julia Beckett saw Greywethers she was only five, but she knew at once that it was her house. Now, twenty-five years later, by some strange chance, she has just become the new owner of the sixteenth-century Wilshire farmhouse. But Julia soon begins to suspect that more than coincidence has brought her there. 

As if Greywethers were a porthal between worlds, she finds herself abruptly transported back in time. Stepping into seventeenth-century England, Julia becomes Mariana, a beautiful young woman struggling against danger and treachery, and battling a forbidden love for Richard de Mornay, handsome forebear of the present squire of Crofton Hall. 

Each time Julia travels back, she becomes more enthralled with the past, falling ever deeper in love with Richard...until one day she realizes Mariana's life threatens to eclipse her own--and that she must find a way to lay the past to rest, or risk losing a chance for love in her own time.

Oh, what a lovely story!  Susanna Kearsley truly has the gift of story-telling.  I was enraptured by the characters, the plot and the setting. Mariana is a quiet romance, unfolding throughout the story but giving over to the development of the characters and the mystery surrounding Greywethers and its history.  

Julia Beckett has a history with Greywethers, the beautiful country home she has held in her heart ever since she first saw it.  She is now the owner and couldn't feel more at home.  The village is a welcoming place, giving Julia the opportunity to meet new and interesting people.  Then strange things begin to happen to Julia and she's not sure if she's hallucinating or having some very odd dreams.    It turns out she is traveling back in time, becoming Mariana, living Mariana's life.  It's all quite fascinating for both Julia and the reader.  Kearsley handles the time travel wonderfully and by the end it's easy to believe.  Julia is a character straight from modern day life who happens to have an extraordinary experience.  

I really did love exploring the possibilities of time travel with Julia.  At first, she finds it hard to believe, just as anyone might.  Then as things progress it becomes the only plausible explanation for the events that Julia is living.  Both Julia and Mariana's time periods are equally captivating.  Both held mysteries and romances while maintaining very distinct moods. Kearsley uses the two time periods to show how very different women are treated and what power, or lack of, they had.  Even with the differences there is still an underlying tone of the promise of love conquering all.

Mariana is a story that is at times humorous, thought provoking and deeply emotional.  If you cry easily be sure to have tissues handy.  It is a non-traditional romance I highly recommend! 


Rating:  A

ARC Review: No Proper Lady

No Proper Lady
Isabel Cooper
Historical Romance/Time Travel
London/1888
Sourcebooks/September 1, 2011

From Goodreads ~

England, 1888. The trees are green, the birds are singing, and in 200 years demons will destroy it all. Unless Joan, a rough-around-the-edges assassin from the future, can take out the dark magician responsible. But to get close to her target she'll need help learning how to fit into society.

Simon has his own reasons for wanting to destroy Alex Reynell, and Joan may be his perfect revenge. But as each day passes, Simon is less sure he wants her anywhere near Reynell. Because no spell in the world will save his future if she isn't in it.

I love the premise of this story. It's one that we don't see too often. The heroine going back in time to save her world. This time around our heroine is the alpha, the kick-ass, weapon wielding time traveler who has a lot to learn about 1888 London. Simon Grenville is more than happy to show her how to fit in, along with a few other exciting things.

Joan's world is a harsh, bleak land of destruction with little hope of survival. We don't see much of it, mostly in Joan's thoughts and what she tells Simon and his sister Eleanor. It's not a place you would ever want to go but it's home and it's all Joan knows. It's also where her family is but at this point she doesn't know if they're still alive. Even with the responsibility of her world surviving, Joan holds a vitality of life that is surprising considering where she came from. I think it's what gives her the ability to enjoy the little things that many take for granted and overlook. She's a complex character, having to leave everything she knows and everyone she loves behind to attempt to stop a powerful man who might very well kill her. I liked her a great deal, she's very straight forward with no patience for fools.

Magic is a very big part of Joan and Simon's world. It's magic that takes Joan back in time and it's magic that has caused such destruction in the future. Simon is quite familiar with various sorts of magic, having studied it for many years. So he's not exactly surprised when Joan tells him that she comes from the future. It's what she's come back to do that surprises him. Simon is a proper gentleman who leads a secret life filled with magic. He's a decent beta hero, using his powers when needed and offering support and guidance to Joan but ultimately it's Joan who is in charge.

The plot brings not only Joan in contact with Simon but also has Joan forming a friendship with Simon's sister Eleanor. The relationship between Joan and Eleanor lets us see how Joan's life has been lacking in anything we would consider nice or frivolous. She's been trained to be an assassin, not attend balls and take tea in the afternoon. I liked how Joan tried to fit in to the London society but still maintain her independence and continues to rely on her training.

The romance is not at all a conventional romance with Joan posing as a widow from America and trying to get close to one of Simon's colleagues. Joan and Simon keep their potentially doomed romance in secret. Joan isn't what Simon is accustomed to when it comes to ladies. She is bold and experienced, she doesn't play coy but tells Simon what she wants. I think he really enjoyed that side of Joan! Joan doesn't expect to live long so she's making the most of the time she has with Simon. They fit well together even though they're from strikingly different worlds. They have their knowledge of magic and science in common. And a very strong mutual attraction.

The pacing is where I had the main problem. It's fairly slow, having Joan turn from a dangerous predator to a woman of fashion and decorum left me a bit bored at times. There are few action scenes until near the end. Joan spends more time learning and using her training in decorum instead of kicking ass. The antagonist and the man Joan is after did made things more interesting. He's very wicked and has no morals to get in his way.

No Proper Lady is an intriguing story with part My Fair Lady and part Sarah Connor (T2 version). I would have liked more action and more on Joan's family. Still, it was a good way to spend a few hours. I do hope we see more stories from Ms. Cooper, possibly in this same world.

Rating: B

Review: Kiss Across Time

Kiss Across Time
Teal Ceagh
Erotic UF/Time Travel/MMF
Time-Crossed Lovers/Book 1
Ellora's Cave/May 2010

From the author's website ~

Taylor Yates just got fired from her university for insisting that the 5th Century British poet and playwright, Inigo Domhnall, existed. When she hears the poet’s lyrics in a death metal song, she engineers a meeting with the dark-eyed, dark-haired lead singer, Brody Gallagher. An unintended kiss sends them spinning back to the poet’s time, when Saxons were pillaging King Arthur’s Britain, and a warrior expects a proper farewell from his woman before he sets off for war.

Brody’s all for kissing her again. More, he’d like her to try kissing his friend and lover, Veris, just to see what will happen. His blond, tall, blue-eyed Saxon friend Veris.

Kiss Across Time is the first book in a unique time travel series. The heroes are centuries old vampires who find their mate in Taylor Yates, a 21st century woman. What makes the relationship even more exceptional is the fact that they can time travel with a kiss. Yes, they kiss and are transported back in time. I love that part!

When Taylor shows up at the concert for the death metal band Noctural Rain, it isn't just to hear the music. She also wants to meet the man who wrote their songs. She needs to get backstage and find this songwriter. Her backstage pass comes in the form of a kiss. Kisses and kissing are obviously important in this series. I liked how a simple kiss becomes so much more within the story line.

Taylor meets not only lead singer Brody Gallagher but his lover Veris and both men know there is something very special about Taylor. She is open minded which is good since she's about to take two vampires as her lovers. The plot moves quickly with both Brody and Veris trying to show Taylor why she's so important to them as they seduce her into going home with them.

The three can hardly keep their hands off each other. There are some wickedly hot sex scenes as all three lovers enjoy exploring the new dimension of having three people in the bed or limo or wherever they may be. *grins* Taylor isn't a prude and she's very attracted to both men and wants to act on that attraction. She also needs Brody and Veris if she wants to find the answers about the poet, Inigo Domhnall, that she's spent so many years researching.

There is a lot of history packed into this novella. We learn some things about Brody and Veris' pasts and how their relationship has evolved over the centuries. We see some parts of the workings of the vampire world, learning how these vamps function among humans. Both of these men are powerful, older vampires but their not evil vamps, merely comfortable with who they are. The links between Veris, Brody and Taylor are far more than what they first seem and as the story continues, we see how connected their lives really are.

Kiss Across Time was a quick read and gave this series a solid start with three interesting main characters. I really enjoyed the time travel aspect of the story and looked forward to seeing more of that in the second book. Kiss Across Swords (book 2) continues the story of Taylor, Brody and Veris, and what happens when two vampires become a threesome with a human while doing some major time travel.

Rating: B+

Guest Review: The Time Traveler's Wife

Please help me welcome my very first guest reviewer, my almost 15 year old daughter Abby. :) She's a voracious reader who averages about 3 books a week. She began reading at an early age and has now been reading for well over a decade. Some of her favorite authors are Garth Nix, Madeleine L'Engle and Mercedes Lackey. I have been asking her to do a guest review for months. I've tried simply asking bugging, gentle persuasion threatening, offering a token of my appreciation bribery but nothing worked.

I was shocked when she told me that she had written a review and if I wanted to I could post it on the blog. The majority of her reading is Young Adult so I was expecting a YA review. I don't read much YA so I thought it would be nice to have some YA reviews. But in typical teenager fashion she gives me a review not for a YA novel but for an adult romance. She had to read it and write the review for her English class so this probably isn't going to happen often. :) I haven't read The Time Traveler's Wife yet, it's on my TBR pile but I will get to it. Enjoy!




Title: The Time Traveler's Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: Time Travel Romance
Published: July 2004

From the back cover ~

A most untraditional love story, this is the celebrated tale of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who involuntarily travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare’s passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bonds of love.

Usually, movies are major book-reading turnoffs for me. And romances aren’t really my thing, either. I hadn’t even heard of Time Traveler’s Wife until after the movie came out, and I was rather skeptical at first, but I wound up devouring the entire book over the course of a weekend.

There’s really no genre for this book: it’s that fantastically unique. It could, perhaps, be called a ‘sci-fi romance’. It’s almost a paranormal romance, except for the fact that there is a scientific explanation for Henry’s condition – another thing that makes this book incredibly unique. Traditionally, the ability to time travel is discovered / created somewhere in the future (along with flying cars and the Fountain of Youth) and used via machines to aggrandize the knowledge of the scientific community / humankind as a whole by viewing events in the past for better understanding, and / or altering the course of History Itself to make life better.

. . . What.

I won’t even begin on how little sense that makes, instead turning to an explanation of the time travel that occurs within Time Traveler’s Wife. Henry has only marginal control over when he travels; it usually occurs when he is stressed, so keeping himself calm does help, but it doesn’t stop him from travelling. He has no choice over the location he’ll go to, or the time at which he arrives, or when he goes back; and he can’t interfere in the path of History Itself.

And all the while, poor Clare is left in the Present (or her present, at least), waiting for Henry, worrying, wondering. Unlike her husband, Clare is a completely normal person, who does not time-travel at random and therefore does not generally run the risk of dying in a foreign time and place. She loves Henry, despite probably sometimes thinking he’s an idiot for taking so many risks, and is willing to wait for him for incredibly long periods of time – multiple decades in one case.

The bond the two share – stretching from Clare’s childhood at age six, all the way until their deaths, despite the time-travelling – is incredibly touching, in a way I can’t quite put into words. Maybe it’s just the fact that Niffenegger’s writing is so convincing – there’s a very “this could be happening to someone I know” feel. It’s real. And that’s what makes it so entrancing.

Rating: A