Timeless (ARC)

Author: Alexandra Monir
Genre: Young-Adult – Fantasy
Publication Date: January 11, 2011
Age Range:  Young-Adult
Pages:  288
Date Scoot Read: January 2011
Source: ARC from Different Area Codes Book Tour

Scoot's Rating:  7- Enjoyed most of it.

Synopsis (via Goodreads): When tragedy strikes Michele Windsor’s world, she is forced to uproot her life and move across the country to New York City, to live with the wealthy, aristocratic grandparents she’s never met. In their old Fifth Avenue mansion filled with a century’s worth of family secrets, Michele discovers a diary that hurtles her back in time to the year 1910. There, in the midst of the glamorous Gilded Age, Michele meets the young man with striking blue eyes who has haunted her dreams all her life – a man she always wished was real, but never imagined could actually exist. And she finds herself falling for him, into an otherworldly, time-crossed romance.

Michele is soon leading a double life, struggling to balance her contemporary high school world with her escapes into the past. But when she stumbles upon a terrible discovery, she is propelled on a race through history to save the boy she loves – a quest that will determine the fate of both of their lives.

Scoot’s Review:

Michele lives in California, has a great set of friends, and a single mom who she loves.  When an unexpected tragedy occurs she is forced to move away from the only home she has known to live with grandparents she never wanted to meet.  Struggling to understand her grandparents and to make new friends at the elite private school, Michele is pleasantly surprised to learn she can travel through time.  Traveling through time she comes to meet her family from the past and a mysterious, handsome boy Phillip who she has only seen in her dreams.  Despite having seen him many times in a dream, the story has one of the instant romances which often bug me (the kind where they barely speak a word and are in ‘love’).  However, the romance still kept me interested and was well written.  I loved traveling back in time and liked how Michele came to know the strong women in her family line.  She came to love and respect the women of her past.  The plot was complicated enough to keep it interesting and there are plenty of mysteries to solve.  Timeless is a good read, but I was not really happy with the ending (for reasons I can’t say without spoiling).  I really want to know more and I hope that my questions will be answered in a second book.