Stealing Time

How could I not love this book? I mean, look at the synopsis! Time travel? Hurricanes? Yes, please! Ronnie Andrews has moved to Florida, and now she's facing a major hurricane in Charley. Her friend Steph is going to stay with her, but Ronnie bails on Steph when her troll of a boyfriend, Jeffrey, asks her to come to the lab where he's working on some weather-related experiment. He tempts her with the promise of a birthday surprise and says the lab will be much safer than her house.


BAHAHAHAHAHA no. No, the lab won't be safer. Unbeknowst to Ronnie, Jeffrey plans to use her as his human subject in a time travel experiment that needs the energy of the hurricane to power it. The special watch he gives her as her birthday gift, that he had custom made, has something to do with it, as do the drugs he slips into her birthday dinner. Ronnie starts feeling queasy, and when she heads for the bathroom, she finds her consciousness sucked from her body and transported into someone else's body, in England, in the mid-18th century. Talk about an unpleasant birthday surprise.

So, we establish right up front that Jeffrey is a horrible person. He draws Ronnie to the lab under false pretenses, drugs her, and sends her back in time without her knowledge or consent, to an era where women were little more than property. And sending her with the watch as her only link to getting back, in a time where a device like that would be seen as some kind of sorcery?! He's a creep and an idiot and is putting his experiment far above Ronnie's well-being. Some boyfriend. I hope she ditches him, assuming she makes it back to her time alive.

And that's debatable. Eighteenth-century England was not known for the rights it afforded women. Ronnie's physical body doesn't show up in modern clothing so as to clearly draw attention to herself, but rather she jumps into the body of one Regina Ingram, a la Quantum Leap. She's unable to convince Regina's brother Jack that she is his sweet, biddable teenage sister, and sure enough, she finds herself imprisoned on charges of witchcraft. A cousin, Mathias, falls for her, as she seems to do for him, and he tries to help her. I don't think he's who he seems, though, as his German accent is inconsistent and he falls out of 18th-century speech patterns at times. I'm curious to find out who exactly he is, because every time he tries to help Ronnie, it seems to make things worse.

There were some things about the book that stuck in my craw just a little. Early on in the book, there is one somewhat detailed sex scene between Ronnie and Jeffrey. That isn't my jam when it comes to reading. I'm okay with the adult action being implied and taking place offscreen, as it were, but I'd rather not read a description with any significant graphic details. If that's something that bothers you, be mindful. However, it is just the one scene, and you can skim over it without losing the thread of the story. And I realize that folks' definition of what constitutes graphic detail will vary.

Waters writes out Mathias' German accent. I found this distracting as I was reading, especially as it wasn't consistent. I would rather have been told where he was from and then mentally created his accent for myself. Then there was the fact that when Ronnie goes to the lab, she leaves her cat, Fluffy, at home. We have cats, y'all. We took them with us when we evacuated ahead of Hurricane Ida last year. If you're evacuating ahead of rough weather, never, never leave your furbabies behind. Ronnie thinks Jeffrey wouldn't want Fluffy at the lab, so that's why she walked away from her cat (that, and I think she was lured by him buttering her up and making her feel special for her birthday – in a hurricane). That should tell her he is not to be trusted.

But there are plenty of things I do like! Waters does a great job with her historical setting, including some pretty stout descriptions of bloodletting, prison conditions, and hanging. The story evokes strong emotion, and I am absolutely sucked in wanting to know what happens in book two. That's what a good story does, right? Stealing Time earns four stars for keeping me engaged, for good historical detail, and for making me care what happens to Ronnie next.If she stays with Jeffrey in book two, I swear to goodness, I may throw the book across the room.

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book from the author. All opinions here are my own, and I don't say nice things about books I don't actually like.