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Timeless Desire (2013)

by Gwyn Cready(Favorite Author)

3.8 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1451612656 (ISBN13: 9781451612653)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Pocket Books

review 1: 3.2. This book wanted to read better. I could smell it on its lightly whiskey-infused, historical named dropped pages. I actually wasn’t wielding excessively high standards when I read this, having not read a book for pure leisure for a while. So I expected a 4 from it, just from the course it started to take.Well, it diverted from the well-lit path that 4+ stories walk within. I believe the main issue was that it took on more than could fill its breeks; its limbs were too narrow to quite hold the weight of such a wide and epic topic of time travel portals and romantic love that transcends 300 years of time. Specifically, a book of such heightened context should include the 5 W's and the 1 How. The ones that particularly needed filling out in the WHY and HOW categories.... more Why did this library have a portal? Why was our heroine Panna able to see it and pass through where others could not? How did the thing even exist? Why did the thing exist? Another why detail that's sort of small scale but really isn’t were the clothes/transfer of items when Panna passed through. the first time her librarian clothes and pencil-in-hair look became removed; she wore nothing but a sexy dress that got her mistaken as a whore numerous times. First I figured the fates were trying to set her up with the hero of the story, but the dress became more of a hindrance seeing as the story hardly remains in the castle and she has to move about within the world more than play sexy kitten for him. Then, when she left his time only to return she brought things with her and they passed through fine. She was also able to take stuff from the past to the future as well. I wanted to know what worked and what didn’t and why because, even if they were small things, if it makes one pause and go hmm... I wonder about that...then the detail should probably be filled in.My next concern was Panna's character. Ah. well. I can't say she was Mary-Sue...I didn't know enough about her to know. She remained flat on the page, which didn’t flatter her. In the 3- dimensional story world of wild events and war, 2-D is not a good look for the main character. The hero, Bridgewater, had more of a filling than she did. Fine, but seeing as she was the main eyes we saw the story from, it sucked that I felt little of her presence whatsoever.You know what else was vague, if not confusing? Setting. Especially near the beginning. I couldn’t tell the ceiling from the ground from the hearth to whatever else. Literally. I really don't know what happened there. It was like, the author was explaining it but I just didn't know what the hell she was talking about. Which never happens to me. Even if it’s been foreign settings for me (and apparently it shouldn't have been, just a storage room in the library floor and later a castle) I’ve always been able to piece together a general picture. Here, I thought I had my notions down but then an event would be like "and she ran down the hall" and I’m like hall? I thought she was in a small room! Haha, no exaggeration..Thing is, I was confused enough to set aside the book, but interested enough to pick it back up. If I'd known how it'd progress and eventually end, I would have kept it down. Something else in the progress of reading that totally threw me off was the romance between the two of them.First off, it's been 1 1/2 days. Not. even. a full. 2 days. And there is "I’ve fallen in love with him/her!" Uh no. You haven't. And these are 30 something year old characters. They know better, no matter what time period you're from, you know better. To not even get into why Bridgewater’s claims that 'she made me feel less lonely' isn't enough to love her stably, what really set me off is Bridgewater’s supposed love and devotion when, during his short courtship of her, wait for it (teensy spoiler, since it's only treated with a wrist slap and set aside) He sees a prostitute! And then he goes into Panna's bed the same night after needing her to mend him up after being caught crawling out of the window on the woman he slept with and getting shot.Uh, okay? And there was another mention of his maybe or maybe not frequenting a nearby brothel house. I honestly had no reason why the author felt the need to insert these details about him. It just make me want to toss this aside and I did, for a couple hours. I was just so severely irritated by that. Don’t claim he loves her so grandly and then have him being a manslut the next. And it wasn’t even added to some character flaw either, like some crazy lustful urges he has. He actually acts like a prude and blushes a whole lot in the story. But nope. Just plopped on us this closet sexual monster. How you like those Roses? The author said, well here is some shit to go with it.The pretty descriptions couldn't save the book either. They came in pretty late or I’d only noticed much later, but it did nothing but tune in my awareness of the author. I tend to sharpen on the speaker's presence when the heroine is flat so that is what happened. And so even with artful detail, I wasn’t too impressed in the take of the story.Overall, I felt nothing for Panna's character or her life. She had no strong interest but an implied one in reading. And all the rest of what I’ve stated contributes to this 3.2 rating. That's it. Good luck with this one. Not a bad story, since I gave it a 3. Merely because the author actually knew how to write. It was all context that sagged these breeks down. It needed to be brought back under extensive revision surgery.
review 2: Outlanders, in case you didn’t know are more than someone from just another country. Outlanders come from another time. Panna Kennedy was an Outlander although she certainly didn’t mean to be. She was searching in an old cabinet for a “treasure”, something that would bring money for her library when, at the back of the cabinet she saw a chapel. Odd.Then she found she could go through the cabinet and saw the hunkiest man she’d ever seen. He looked just like the statue in the library in Penns Wood, PA. Well, Panna wasn’t in PA any more – not even close. Try early 17th Century! And the hunk? Hunkier than ever up close but also quite sad, kneeling at a grave. A look out the window reveals Hadrian’s Wall on the border between Scotland and England. Their meeting isn’t polite. He calls her a whore-spy and she, well, she flounces away because she has on a dress perfect for flouncing. Going back /forward in time apparently changes clothes as well as lifestyles. There is one major hitch, though. You can only go three times. Panna falls and falls hard for Jamie Bridgewater. Jamie is too caught up trying to make peace between his grandfather, and his father – neither who have ever acknowledged his existence. The Earl of Bridgewater has a perfect son in Lord Adderly (who scarily looks just like Jamie) and The McIver tossed Jamie’s mother out when he found she was pregnant. No one has just cared for him. Ever.The history in this book is remarkable. The clothing descriptions and character traits quite time specific and the love story rivals that of Diane Gabaldon. A perfect tale for a day or two on the porch swing or lying on the grass. I loved it!!ps. I do NOT like the cover at all. It has absolutely nothing to do with the story! less

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