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Out of Time A Time Travel Mystery Out of Time #1 eBook Monique Martin

Download As PDF : Out of Time A Time Travel Mystery Out of Time #1 eBook Monique Martin

Out of Time A Time Travel Mystery Out of Time #1 eBook Monique Martin

If you're someone who likes time travel mixed in with a formulaic fluffy romance between a strong-willed woman and an older taciturn man, then this is the book for you.

If you like a superficial mystery that doesn't tax your brain with stomach clenching twists, then this book is still in your genre.

If you like a vampire story that's told at arm's length rather than emotionally pulling you into the thick of things--one that doesn't grip you enough to get in the way of thinking about what you're going to cook for dinner--then you just found your next read. Get your finger ready to press the "click to buy" button. It's free and is the first of a series.

However...

If you're in the mood to read a story that drops you into the emotional psyches of the characters and has you turning pages wondering what's going to happen next as you chew off the last of your lipstick and leave your pasta water boiling over because you're too involved with the story to remember what time it is, you'll be disappointed. Give it a miss.


Tags : Out of Time: A Time Travel Mystery (Out of Time #1) - Kindle edition by Monique Martin. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Out of Time: A Time Travel Mystery (Out of Time #1).,ebook,Monique Martin,Out of Time: A Time Travel Mystery (Out of Time #1),FICTION Fantasy Historical,FICTION Romance Time Travel

Out of Time A Time Travel Mystery Out of Time #1 eBook Monique Martin Reviews

I was not expecting much from this book. I'll say it up front. After several lackluster books in a row (several of which I didn't even read enough of to attempt reviews because they were just that bad,), my expectations had shriveled to dry husks simply waiting for further disappointment. They weren't helped by the formulaic romantic set up that took place in the first chapter of this book. Nor by the rushed time travel sequence with, what I felt to be, very understated reactions by the two main characters.

I liked Simon and Elizabeth by this point, but not enough to really care about them a whole lot. The story was mildly interesting, but somehow failed to grab me. But as Simon and Elizabeth became more deeply involved in the past, I found myself enjoying the story a little more. At the very least, I still liked the characters reasonably well, and was interested to see what would happen to them in the six weeks they were going to spend in the 1920s. After all, that isn't too long a period of time but it's certainly long enough you have to worry about things like survival. Certainly, it was more than enough time to explore the characters and their attraction to each other and set up a decent mystery.

And then...sudden vampire! Not just any vampire, but gangster vampire--the worst kind, for sure.

It was around the point when the vampire plot surfaced that I realized what was bothering me about the book. The different aspects of the story felt weirdly disjointed. Simon is initially set up as a professor of the occult which sets up expectations for the supernatural. But we quickly leave behind that premise as he and Elizabeth are sent back in time. For a while, we focus on the time travel aspect. Then the romance takes the foreground. Then suddenly, the supernatural theme is back with the romance frequently intruding and the time travel creeping back in toward the end.

The time travel plot, the supernatural plot and the romance plot didn't quite manage to form a seamless, cohesive plot with varying levels of complexity the way it would in a good novel. Instead, they were clearly three separate plots that were constantly vying for the reader's attention as each plot took the spotlight only to give way to the others after its moment was finished. It felt more like a patchwork of plots than a single, working storyline with multiple facets.

By the time I was halfway through the book, the time travel aspect had faded to the point it felt like nothing more than a plot device to force Simon and Elizabeth to share a bed and, thus, become lovers as well as set up a time crunch for resolving their vampire issues.

Unfortunately, it was also at this point when the story started to rapidly go downhill as well. It felt like character development ground to a halt (the characters beginning to suddenly behave out of character doesn't count as actual development). Despite having supposedly resolved their romantic tension with at least one full day of bedroom fun times and many breathy declarations of love, Simon and Elizabeth were still mooning after each other to the point the romance began to feel intrusive. Equally annoying was the fact that Elizabeth turned from smart and witty to the typical addle-brained heroine whose brain was clearly damaged by the mere presence of her girly parts--not to mention the men quite literally fighting over her.

The moment Elizabeth accepted the dinner invitation from the unscrupulous potentially-a-vampire gangster who asked her to dinner fully believing she was a married woman, and while her husband was in the same room with them...a gangster she knew first hand to be violent and dangerous, I knew I was going to be disappointed. The plot device was just too obvious.

The story rapidly spiraled into painful cliches that dampened what enjoyment I had started to have in it. King confesses his deep, dark secret to Elizabeth because she is "an amazing woman." He barely knew her at this point. They had shared a few minutes of conversation here and there while she was at work (and he stalked her a lot--seems to be the typical M.O. of a Vampire in Love). Not only has he somehow managed to glean that she is amazing and different from all the other women he knows just from her waitressing skills, but for some idiotic reason, he trusts her enough to not only tell her his secret but show her as well. Now, her modern sensibilities aside, Elizabeth just isn't that amazing. She's interesting and likeable, but she does not stand out from the female populous as exceptional in any way that is visible to the readers. It's only a short time later that a priest asserts that Elizabeth is "pure of heart."

*sigh*

I wish authors would realize that to be the heroine of a romantic story, a woman doesn't have to be remarkable or amazing. And you're never going to convince your reader an average woman is special just because you force characters to say she is over and over with no actual evidence to demonstrate this fact. I don't want to be told a character is amazing; I want to be shown it through the story and their actions. Elizabeth is a likeable character but she falls far short of the "amazing" mark.

The villain of the story, King, is woefully underdeveloped and his motives are incredibly murky at best. He seems driven by his "love" for Elizabeth despite that he literally doesn't know her. His entire motivation revolves around wanting to force a woman he's barely interacted with, to love him because of his own typically twisted version of love. The only reasons he gives for his deep devotion is that she is "amazing" and that a pair of matching rings makes their love "fate." That is it. That is literally as deep as we delve into his motivations. Trying to immerse yourself in this character or feel anything for him is like trying to scuba dive in a kiddie pool. There's just not enough there to work with.

Unfortunately, the romantic cliches gradually devoured the other plots and left me splashing around mournfully in the dregs of what had the potential to be a good story. It wasn't a terrible book, and readers satisfied with shallow romance stories with cliche love triangles are very likely to enjoy the story for what it is. Many of the characters are likeable (Charlie, for instance), but they long for more development. King could have been a "remarkable" villain if he'd had deeper motivation than wanting in Elizabeth's pants. I wish that Elizabeth hadn't turned dumb and Simon had stayed snarky and grumpy instead of just becoming a typical jealous boyfriend.

All in all, it was average. I didn't hate it and I may go back and read it again at some point. But I'm not sure I'll be recommending it to a whole lot of people.
I don't even know where to begin. This is a book I wasn't expecting. I figured I would enjoy it since it is about time travel. I didn't realize I would absolutely fall in love with the characters. You feel their emotions. You feel their pain, passion, fear, rejection, confusion. You feel it all with them. It is a wonderful story. It is easy to read, easy to follow, easy to get lost in. I love science fiction especially concerning time travel. Some of my favorite TV Shows include Doctor Who, 12 Monkeys, & Legends of Tomorrow, so this was right up my ally. I just didn't realize how consuming the characters would be. And I am not just speaking of the male main character, Simon. He is great...frustrating at times but great. I am mainly referring to the female main character, Elizabeth. She is me. She is a normal girl. She wants to help people. She can't just sit back and watch someone be destroyed. She loves everyone with all of her being. She brings your emotions to the surface making you part of the story.

I would recommend this book to anyone really. There are some weird parts. There are some extremely frustrating parts. There are some adult parts but nothing too risky. But most of it is about the relationships between all of the characters. How they grow with each other. I wont detail my emotions throughout my readings those are listed frequently in my "updates" (see here [...]). But I will say, like I did in my updates, this story reminds me of two characters from one of my fav shows listed above. This isn't a bad thing...at least not for me. But for some reason all I could picture was Ten and Rose. Too many overlapping character traits I guess. I think it made me love this book even more. Clearly the adult stuff strays from their story. I hate to make comparisons but the rest is spot on. I truly enjoyed this story and can't wait to read more books in this series.
If you're someone who likes time travel mixed in with a formulaic fluffy romance between a strong-willed woman and an older taciturn man, then this is the book for you.

If you like a superficial mystery that doesn't tax your brain with stomach clenching twists, then this book is still in your genre.

If you like a vampire story that's told at arm's length rather than emotionally pulling you into the thick of things--one that doesn't grip you enough to get in the way of thinking about what you're going to cook for dinner--then you just found your next read. Get your finger ready to press the "click to buy" button. It's free and is the first of a series.

However...

If you're in the mood to read a story that drops you into the emotional psyches of the characters and has you turning pages wondering what's going to happen next as you chew off the last of your lipstick and leave your pasta water boiling over because you're too involved with the story to remember what time it is, you'll be disappointed. Give it a miss.