Customer Reviews

The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For the record I've read 8 of the authors listed above previously. In the introduction by Telep she mentions how time travel romance flourished in the 90's and early new millennium, but how paranormal romance has sort of shoved it away. I tried to remember the last *new* time travel romance I had read and I believe it would be Gwyn Cready's Tumbling Through Time, which I only liked so-so. I know that Brenda Joyce had several with her Time Guardians series--which was also a so-so series in my opinion. If you count e-books, then Emma Lai's 'Mates of the Guardians' stories are also time travel (the Guardians protect time and such), both of which I enjoyed quite a bit.

So if you're like me you're wondering why I would buy a book about Time Travel Romance (when I should have bought the Vampire Romance anthology, or the second Paranormal Romance anthology) and the truth is that I want to like Time Travel Romances. I was unfortunately tainted by all the ones in the 90's however and grew very cautious of the concept.

Did I enjoy this anthology? At times. I was disappointed more often then not, and felt that some of the endings to the stories were too 'And you can guess what happens next' for my tastes. I'm shallow, I like my romances to end with something along the lines of 'happily ever after' if they're not going to end with 'and they all died'. Give me syrupy sweet or give me bitterly dark.

That said I did enjoy some of them--Gwyn Cready's "The Key to Happiness" was refreshing. In it a man comes back to stop the woman he loves from making a choice that will ultimately kill her spirit. She'll have everything she wants for years, but then one moment in time happens and her world crumbles around her feet. He offers her a choice--take the road you know will lead to success or take the road that may lead to lasting happiness. This was the perfect short story; it tied up loose ends, had development and tension, and didn't end as if it should have had three chapters more to it.

Conversely Sandy Blair's "MacDuff's Secret" is also an interesting read, but I think I would have preferred if it had been longer. Novel length perhaps. A young teacher in Scotland travels back with five of her charges to a Glen that is almost too good to be true. But for a woman who has always done what is expected of her, will she take the chance to have something for herself finally?

Sara MacKenzie's "Stepping Back" was a fun read, though the ending left me unsatisfied. A young woman with no past begins to dig up the history of young woman who had disappeared a century earlier.

Hands down the story I enjoyed the most was A.J. Menden's "Future Date" about a a dating site that measures who you're compatible with across time itself. It was quirky, it was a cute and it was witty--much like her Elite Hands of Justice books are.

For the vast majority of the other stories however they didn't hold my interest very long. Some started out interestingly enough, but soon got tiresome or annoying (Michelle Maddox's "The Eleventh Hour") and some just were boring period (Maureen McGowan's "Lost and Found").

Am I glad I read it? Yes, because these aren't the same sort of tawdry bits of fluff from the days of yore in Time Travel Romance Writing so they did give me hope. I just wish that more of the stories had held my interest.

As with all anthologies, there's a couple of okay stories, but with this one, there's a lot of good stories - even pointed me to some new (to me) authors. Enjoy!

This book provided some very frustrating times for me while reading. It had some great stories in it & some not so great stories. I felt like as soon as the story started getting good it was over and I wanted more...on some of them not all of them! A few were very far fetched and I couldnt get a grasp of what they were talking about. Then some of them were very cute and left me looking up those authors for more books by them. It is an easy time passing read if you dont have the time to get into a long book then I suggest this for easy reading.

Good book I liked the short stories most kept me very interested. I would recommend this book to others. I also appreciated that there was some preview of the book that I could read before purchase.

Some of the stories in here were better than others, and that's usually the case with an anthology; they're not usually all just as good or bad as the rest. I generally prefer full novels to short stories, but this was a reasonably good collection. If you've never read a time travel romance and want to dip your toe, this is a good sampling.