Timeless Desire: An Outlander Love Story Review

   Happy Weekend everyone!  I hope you're all having a good one.  Last weekend I shared the press release for Timeless Desire by Gwyn Cready with you.  This weekend I'm sharing my thoughts and review of the book.  Now I have no clue what I'm doing so please stick with me as try to get my thoughts across in a logical manner without spoiling the book for anyone. 

Plot: First off, Timeless Desire is a time-traveling romance.  If you don't like romance novels or you don't like sci-fi/fantasy elements to your novels, this book is not for you.  I however enjoy both of these things, which is probably a good thing in this case.  The story starts in modern day Pennsylvania, but quickly switches to eighteenth century England, where most of the story takes place.  The hostilities between England and Scotland are at the core of the conflicts in this book.  Jamie is under house-arrest, accused of treason against England, and has to struggle between loyalty to country and saving innocent lives.  There's also family tension between Jamie and his father and half-brother, both Englishmen, as well as Jamie and his grandfather, a Scottish clan chief. 

Characters: The main characters are Panna, short for Pandora, a modern day young widowed librarian; and Jamie a soldier in the English Army living in a castle on the boarder of England and Scotland during the eighteenth century.  Both characters are well developed with back stories and believable personalities.  They interact with each other and other characters as you'd expect.  I hate reading a story, learning a character's personality and then suddenly the character acts completely differently than you've come to expect for no reason or with no explanation.  That is never the case with Panna and Jamie, or any of the other more minor characters.  The rest of the cast of characters are the expected friends, servants, co-conspirators, villains, and those that fall in-between.  Each has a unique voice and is given enough background that you don't question their actions. 

General Writing: The story moves along at a good pace.  I never felt like it was dragging or that I was being bogged down with too much unnecessary detail.  Nor was I left wanting, or needing, more detail at any point.  This is always a giant plus for me.  Plot and character development both followed a logical path.  I never had a mental head tilt of confusion about where a plot point came from or why an action took place.  There were no big, glaring errors that I noticed in the plot, though my European history isn't that great.  I was impressed with how few missed copy-edits I found.  In most books, even high profile best-sellers, I find a fair amount of small errors, doubled up words or phrases, referring to the wrong character, left out articles- a, the, it.  I understand that the author is not going to catch every tiny mistake, their brain won't let them see the mistakes, but editors should catch these things.  It's a bit of a pet-peeve of mine.  So only finding one or two of these errors in Timeless Desire caught my attention, in a good way. 

Final Thoughts:  I enjoyed Timeless Desire.  It's a fun, light read.  I was able to finish the book within 24 hours.  I started on a Saturday morning and finished Sunday morning.  I probably would have finished on Saturday, but my kindle died on me and the Olympics were on.  The downside of the book, for me, was that I never reached that point where I couldn't put the book down.  The story  was entertaining, but never fulling engrossing or attention grabbing.  If I needed to step away from the book for a little while to make something to eat or run an errand I could with no issues.  It wasn't a it's 2am and I have to be at work in 6 hours but I can't sleep til I know what happens book.  I would categorize it as a take to the beach or read on your lunch break at work book, not a curl up on the couch on a rainy Sunday with a cup of tea and read all afternoon book. 

   As I mentioned last weekend with the press release, here is a link to help you find the right copy of Timeless Desire for your ereader or a print copy if you prefer: http://astorandblue.com/timeless-desire-an-outlander-love-story/

   

Disclaimer:  A copy of this book was sent to me for review, but all thoughts and opinions are completely my own.