Timeless

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.

This book had the misfortune of being my first book after The Fault in Our Stars.

I don't believe my overall opinion of this book would've been any different than it is now had I not read The Fault in Our Stars prior to reading this.  I still would've loved and been bothered by the same things.  But there wouldn't have been such a level of disappointment, because all I could think when I started was This is not The Fault in Our Stars. 


I got over this eventually.  Focused on this book and just this book.

It's not a bad book, really.  The time travel concept is very interesting (although, since I am a huge huge fan of time travel, I am a bit biased).  Michele did not follow the common trend of bitchy female MCs who constantly take out their angst on others.  Family played a huge role in this.  The song lyrics were lovely, but the songs themselves were even lovelier--I got the CD along with the book, and both Bring the Color Back and Chasing Time are absolutely gorgeous.  And, most importantly: the setting was freaking awesome.  The descriptions of New York City in the early 1900s made me ridiculously happy.  I loved seeing it in all the different eras, and as far as I know, Monir did a very good job of being historically accurate.

I saw all it had going for it, and despite the iffy start (which was also tainted by the aforementioned disappointment) I was starting to really like Timeless.

And then the insta-love.

Now, hear me out.  Michele and Phillip are not the worst star-crossed lovers you will find in YA fiction, not by a long shot.  They are both decent people, for one; their relationship does not involve stalking/abuse, for another; and I think the whole song-writer/composer combination works well.  But despite that, there was very little chemistry. Certainly not enough chemistry to justify them falling desperately in love with each other after talking to each other for less than a few hours.  Certainly not enough to make Michele swear she'll never fall for another boy for the rest of her life if she can't have Phillip after knowing him for days.  I'm sorry, but that's just not how it works.  They may be infatuated with one another. They may have even begun to really like each other. But love is not something that can just appear, something that can just magically form between two people who scarcely know each other.  Love is when you know another person as well as yourself, not when you've seen a beautiful boy in your dreams for years so the instant you meet him you decide it is true love.

Also, the characters didn't do anything for me.  I think a big part of this was the dialogue; it was cheesy, shallow, and unrealistic.  None of the characters came off the pages.  They were all very flat and distant.  Despite a very sad event that happens early on in the book and causes much grieving for the rest of it, I never once felt the slightest bit upset.  There was simply no connection.

The plot was pretty simplistic; there was no real climax or sense of urgency because there was no villain or anything of the sort.  It was simply Michele trying to rescue her "beloved."  Still a quick read, though--it's only 280-something pages.

I'm giving this three stars because of the things I liked, mentioned above (primarily the NYC settings).  However, I would only recommend this to someone who can stomach the insta-love and just try and appreciate the awesomeness of New York City's golden age.

Oh, and buy the CD.  You won't regret it.

3 stars.