Time Between Us could well be used as the type specimen for the YA branch of this sub-genre. It tells of a time travelling boy, Bennet, who falls in love with a girl, Anna, born 17 years before him. And if you are a fan of YA romance where the romance is the plot (but there's no sex), and you like your YA romance with some sort of tension such as might come from being from a different time than your beloved, you may well enjoy this one.
In any event, all the while Bennet knows his time as a high school classmate of Anna's is fraught, just fraught, with complication, and he is conflicted. And she knows she is attracted to his attractive self and doesn't understand why he is so distant and then so less distant. It is love, only fraught. It is told from the point of view of the girl, Anna, and the reader really gets to know what Anna is thinking and feeling (which is mostly about herself, and about herself and her time-travelling love).
Happily for Anna, who dreams of travel, Bennet's gifts of preternatural temporal relocation transcend geographical limits as well, so he can take the two of them to yesterday in Italy etc. I am not sure this served much point viz story progression, but it made me want to be Bennet's friend really really badly.
I am pretty sure this is not my favorite sub-genre of time travel...although perhaps if I had found the characters more interesting, and if the fraught romance had been augmented more robustly by the other overshadowed plot elements (like what the heck happened to Bennet's sister?) I might now be feeling differently....
Ha! I love this review. I read it to myself in a rather grumpy voice, and it came out perfectly.
ReplyDeleteI did like THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE, but as a romance, not at all as a time travel book. I've read quite a few books where the time travel is put in solely for the sake of romance, and I think I can say... you're not missing much by missing them. I did enjoy Ann Brashares' recent one, though that had more going for it than romance (thankfully). All to say... I don't know that I'll pick this one up, but I loved your review.
Every time traveler's ability transcends geographic limitations since if they didn't they couldn't travel to Earth's past at all. Even traveling to the same place you are standing but yesterday would put you miles off course as the Earth moves. If you could only travel through time in your geographic location you would be gone gone.
ReplyDelete