sunsetxcocktail

This was a bit of cover lust for me. The cover is simply gorgeous. 

The story...not so much. It was slow, with irritating characters, very confusing, a annoying misogynistic tones. Its a time travel novel, so the overbearing misogynistic tones were true to the period, but it was still annoying.

The main character, Gwen, comes from a family with a tie to a secret society of time travels. The next female in line to supposedly receive the gene  and go on secret wonderful time travel adventures is her cousin Charlotte, who has therefore been training her whole life. Gwen's mum keeps her family away from this until unfortunate circumstances make them move to London to life with Charlotte and her family.

Gwen is a pretty normal 16 year old. She loves films, and gossips with her BFF Lesley. Gwen sounds more like 12 than 16 and came across to be as immature and annoying. She had a few amusing snarky moments, but I didn't feel anything particularly likable about about this character. As it turns out, Mum lied and Gwen is really the time traveler. So Gwen has a few trips back in time. She's freaked. Naturally.

Then she finally comes clean and everyone in the family is in an uproar. She's taken to the secret time travel head quarters where everything gets very confusing. Gwen has a habit of comparing things to movies....if this was a film this would happen. Which got annoying. (Though to be fair, if I found myself in the same situation, my immediate thoughts would be, well it wasn't like this on Dr Who)

I didn't have a clue what was going on in this novel. It took so long to get anywhere, by the time things started happening,  I just stopped caring. It felt like it was all over the place. Gwen can't understand why Charlotte, the cousin, is being mean and bitchy. If you'd been preparing for something your whole life and its your cousin who gets the prize, not you, then its completely understandable that Charlotte would be beyond furious. 

We're also introduced to Gideon, a very good looking but arrogant boy who is also a time traveler and has been helping with Charlotte's training. He's rude to Gwen and bossy when they go on their time travel excursions. The whole thing seems to revolve around some sort of prophecy featuring different people in time who are named after gemstones and the current society needs their blood to get some special device to reveal a great secret. The previous two time travelers got lost in time and took the device with them but a second one was found. Gwen and Gideon need to get the remaining blood to get the secret from the second device. 

That was my understanding of it. There's a rush of action right at the end which leaves a lot of untied threads. And it just sort of...ends. Very very frustrating. Its the first of a trilogy, so I'm guessing answers come in the next books. But I'm not interested enough to find out. Disappointing. 

As much as I love my YA, I think I might be too old for this one. 

Time Travel Square crossed off for Summer 2015 Bookish Bingo

Primary Color Cover Square crossed off for Story Sprites Round 1