1LyndaInOregon
Disclaimer: An electronic copy of this book was provided in exchange for review by publishers Black Rose Writing, via Library Thing.
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Travel writer Shelby Starling has a job many would envy, visiting some of the most popular tourist sites in the world on someone else’s dime and getting paid for it, to boot. And though she enjoys her peripatetic lifestyle, she still feels something is missing. Though she’s welcome in many places, she’s not really at home in any of them.
It’s not until she suffers an odd and disturbing hallucination while in Rome that she begins to have an inkling that there may be a reason for the feeling, although it takes several more of the disturbing incidents before it’s revealed that Shelby is a Traveler – an old soul in a new body, displaced in time and needing to return to its true time to “make great things happen”.
Nash uses this promising idea to lead her characters through several European capitals and follows Shelby through brief and often disturbing visions which at first seem unrelated except for the intensity of the emotions they evoke. Even readers who think they know where this is going probably won’t get there much ahead of Shelby and her sexy Italian boyfriend.
If there’s something to be quibbled about in the novel, it’s the repetitious descriptions of Shelby going out and getting hammered essentially every night and waking up with a hangover. It gets a bit tedious, and makes it harder for the reader to have a lot of empathy for the character. The pacing could also be goosed up a little -- after the first half dozen or so time slips, the reader may be forgiven for wondering if the plot is going anywhere at all. Nash almost but not quite makes up for the slog with detailed and evocative descriptions of the various times and places her heroine visits.
All in all, it’s an entertaining read that doesn’t demand much beyond patience – kind of like going through customs on an otherwise enjoyable holiday.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Travel writer Shelby Starling has a job many would envy, visiting some of the most popular tourist sites in the world on someone else’s dime and getting paid for it, to boot. And though she enjoys her peripatetic lifestyle, she still feels something is missing. Though she’s welcome in many places, she’s not really at home in any of them.
It’s not until she suffers an odd and disturbing hallucination while in Rome that she begins to have an inkling that there may be a reason for the feeling, although it takes several more of the disturbing incidents before it’s revealed that Shelby is a Traveler – an old soul in a new body, displaced in time and needing to return to its true time to “make great things happen”.
Nash uses this promising idea to lead her characters through several European capitals and follows Shelby through brief and often disturbing visions which at first seem unrelated except for the intensity of the emotions they evoke. Even readers who think they know where this is going probably won’t get there much ahead of Shelby and her sexy Italian boyfriend.
If there’s something to be quibbled about in the novel, it’s the repetitious descriptions of Shelby going out and getting hammered essentially every night and waking up with a hangover. It gets a bit tedious, and makes it harder for the reader to have a lot of empathy for the character. The pacing could also be goosed up a little -- after the first half dozen or so time slips, the reader may be forgiven for wondering if the plot is going anywhere at all. Nash almost but not quite makes up for the slog with detailed and evocative descriptions of the various times and places her heroine visits.
All in all, it’s an entertaining read that doesn’t demand much beyond patience – kind of like going through customs on an otherwise enjoyable holiday.
