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unabridgedchick's review
3.0
This book continues the story of time traveling Alex and her 17th century husband Matthew started in A Rip in the Veil. Sadly, while others found this one to be the stronger novel, I have to admit I far preferred A Rip in the Veil!
Set in the 17th century, the story picks up sometime later (months?) after the first book ends. As with the previous novel, the action starts immediately: Matthew is sold into slavery by his villainous brother, shipped over to the Colonies, where he's abused and used. His wife Alex, modern lady that she is, doesn't accept this, and sets off after him. (This is the first ten pages.) From there, Belfrage continues the action -- rescue, attacks, betrayals, more time travel, soap opera-ish twists, and modern sentiments clashing with historical ones.
I can't quite nail down what felt so different in this book than the previous one other than I just was less taken with Alex and Matthew, our romantic leads. Even though I would normally admire a woman like Alex -- tough, pragmatic, capable of being more than just a mother -- I was actually quite put off by the callousness she displayed toward her children. After easily abandoning her first child (and subsequently rejecting him), she left her second one to embark on a trip that could have killed her. (When she's pregnant again, there's a scene where she thinks about how reassuring it is being pregnant, and honestly, all I could think was, when are you leaving this kid behind?)
I also found the sexytimes between Alex and her husband a bit much -- both in frequency -- and at times, the level of violence. Matthew is understandably damaged from his time in near slavery in the Colonies, but regardless of the psychic wounds, I'm never ever going to get behind rape, even when the author tells me the heroine is okay with it.
Still, there's something to be said for an otherwise fluffy-ish novel having some complicated grounding, dark emotions, and a heroine who isn't insta-happy-homemaker. The villains are particularly evil but family ties run deep, and Alex (and we the readers) have to accept brushing elbows with some unsavory people. Her family's ability to evoke 'time nodes' through art is again addressed in this book, a gift and a curse that affects more than just Alex.
For a sense of the novel, the author has the first three chapters available online, and unlike the first book, this one ends on a cliff hanger -- so be prepared to yearn for the third book in the series!
Set in the 17th century, the story picks up sometime later (months?) after the first book ends. As with the previous novel, the action starts immediately: Matthew is sold into slavery by his villainous brother, shipped over to the Colonies, where he's abused and used. His wife Alex, modern lady that she is, doesn't accept this, and sets off after him. (This is the first ten pages.) From there, Belfrage continues the action -- rescue, attacks, betrayals, more time travel, soap opera-ish twists, and modern sentiments clashing with historical ones.
I can't quite nail down what felt so different in this book than the previous one other than I just was less taken with Alex and Matthew, our romantic leads. Even though I would normally admire a woman like Alex -- tough, pragmatic, capable of being more than just a mother -- I was actually quite put off by the callousness she displayed toward her children. After easily abandoning her first child (and subsequently rejecting him), she left her second one to embark on a trip that could have killed her. (When she's pregnant again, there's a scene where she thinks about how reassuring it is being pregnant, and honestly, all I could think was, when are you leaving this kid behind?)
I also found the sexytimes between Alex and her husband a bit much -- both in frequency -- and at times, the level of violence. Matthew is understandably damaged from his time in near slavery in the Colonies, but regardless of the psychic wounds, I'm never ever going to get behind rape, even when the author tells me the heroine is okay with it.
Still, there's something to be said for an otherwise fluffy-ish novel having some complicated grounding, dark emotions, and a heroine who isn't insta-happy-homemaker. The villains are particularly evil but family ties run deep, and Alex (and we the readers) have to accept brushing elbows with some unsavory people. Her family's ability to evoke 'time nodes' through art is again addressed in this book, a gift and a curse that affects more than just Alex.
For a sense of the novel, the author has the first three chapters available online, and unlike the first book, this one ends on a cliff hanger -- so be prepared to yearn for the third book in the series!
jordantaylor's review
1.0
In 1661, Matthew is kidnapped and shipped to Virginia as an indentured servant, leaving behind his young son and his wife Alex, a time-traveler from 2005, who journeys from Scotland to the New World in search of her husband.
This book is the second in a series, and I haven't read the first one. I don't think that reading the prequel is absolutely necessary, but I can see that it would have helped in some areas. The author expects us to be aware of Alex's time traveling, and doesn't outright state this fact until a bit later. Personally, I was pretty shocked, as I hadn't known that this was a time travel story until that point. After figuring this out, I found very little back story about how everything had come about. The book simply plunges in, with little character introduction, either.
Well, I have a particular disliking for time travel books. But I would have certainly set this preference aside for a short time if the book had been good enough. However, it was not to be.
The plot was pretty clumsy, and I was annoyed by characters tossing the word "aye" into any sentence that didn't already sound historical enough. For seemingly no reason, Alex tells a man she has only known for a few days about her time traveling, when she has kept this a secret from even her most trusted servants - and he believes her without hesitation. Characters are conveniently killed off when their time to exit the story comes up. Matthew tells us, in one chapter, that it has been three years since he has seen his wife, but a few chapters later she tells us that she hasn't seen him for one year.
I couldn't warm up to any of the characters, either. Alex seemed like the typical modern girl thrown into a historical setting. She has the excuse of being from the future, but that didn't make her any less irritating. And she abandons not one but two of her children in the course of the book.
The justification? When she is considering leaving her son and setting out to save her husband, she thinks about taking the boy with her. But then she reasons "But if he died, the estate would go to his greedy uncle, and Matthew wouldn't want that."
Um, what about not wanting your son to die, maybe?
Much about this book reminded me of Outlander, and I don't mean that in a good way.
Like the cartoonishly 'good' hero of that story, Matthew also accepts punishment by flogging for someone else, though he himself is innocent.
Alright, nothing wrong with that.
Time travel and the setting of Scotland - again, fine.
Lots of wince-inducing, exasperating, bad sex - not so good.
And finally, the same things that so disturbed me about Outlander were present here, too.
The author's promotion or take on sex seemed skewed at best, and deeply unsettling at worst. My first hint that she, like Gabaldon, was leaning in this direction came when Alex was on board her ship. She meets a Spanish man who seems some sort of reincarnation of a man she knew in the future. Because this man looks exactly like him, Alex introduces herself, and they proceed to share a flirtatious friendship. But a bit later, she tells us that the man he seems a body double for was her rapist! So she sees her rapist in another time period and immediately heads straight toward him to flirt? What is this?
Belfrage also puts Alex in a situation where she is forced to allow herself to be raped (it's either that or her husband's life).
And later on, unforgivably, Matthew rapes Alex. There is no mistaking it for the couple enjoying themselves. It is rape, and Belfrage makes this very clear. Thus, I was shocked when a few moments afterward, the two are cozily cuddling in bed, making jokes and laughing together. My shock quickly turned to disgust and outrage as the story moved on, and the incident is never brought up again.
In another scene not so long afterward, the two get into an argument. Alex angrily attempts to walk out, but Matthew violently grabs her, throws her down on the bed, and rapes her. Again, no mistaking this. Alex repeatedly, clearly says "NO." She resists. But everything is glossed over with the idea of "Sure, she said no at first, but that was before she started enjoying it!" Because eventually, Alex stops resisting, as if watering the assault down like this makes it all alright. Afterward, Alex assures the reader that she loves Matthew, and again, the incident never comes up again.
This flippant view of rape, blurring it with consensual sex, is just not right. Does Belfrage believe that rape within a marriage cannot occur? That rape isn't that big of a deal? That most of the time women are overreacting? That rape is okay if a woman only minds at first?
This was a huge issue for me, and though I think it should be for everyone, it is sadly the sort of thing that I see in many books these days. Many readers will most likely react to these scenes with the same nonchalance that the author writes into them, or perhaps hardly even notice anything other than another sex scene.
I certainly will not be looking for the other book in this series. Disappointing.
Thanks nevertheless to Troubador Publishing / Matador and NetGalley.com for providing me with an advance review copy of this book.
This book is the second in a series, and I haven't read the first one. I don't think that reading the prequel is absolutely necessary, but I can see that it would have helped in some areas. The author expects us to be aware of Alex's time traveling, and doesn't outright state this fact until a bit later. Personally, I was pretty shocked, as I hadn't known that this was a time travel story until that point. After figuring this out, I found very little back story about how everything had come about. The book simply plunges in, with little character introduction, either.
Well, I have a particular disliking for time travel books. But I would have certainly set this preference aside for a short time if the book had been good enough. However, it was not to be.
The plot was pretty clumsy, and I was annoyed by characters tossing the word "aye" into any sentence that didn't already sound historical enough. For seemingly no reason, Alex tells a man she has only known for a few days about her time traveling, when she has kept this a secret from even her most trusted servants - and he believes her without hesitation. Characters are conveniently killed off when their time to exit the story comes up. Matthew tells us, in one chapter, that it has been three years since he has seen his wife, but a few chapters later she tells us that she hasn't seen him for one year.
I couldn't warm up to any of the characters, either. Alex seemed like the typical modern girl thrown into a historical setting. She has the excuse of being from the future, but that didn't make her any less irritating. And she abandons not one but two of her children in the course of the book.
The justification? When she is considering leaving her son and setting out to save her husband, she thinks about taking the boy with her. But then she reasons "But if he died, the estate would go to his greedy uncle, and Matthew wouldn't want that."
Um, what about not wanting your son to die, maybe?
Much about this book reminded me of Outlander, and I don't mean that in a good way.
Like the cartoonishly 'good' hero of that story, Matthew also accepts punishment by flogging for someone else, though he himself is innocent.
Alright, nothing wrong with that.
Time travel and the setting of Scotland - again, fine.
Lots of wince-inducing, exasperating, bad sex - not so good.
And finally, the same things that so disturbed me about Outlander were present here, too.
The author's promotion or take on sex seemed skewed at best, and deeply unsettling at worst. My first hint that she, like Gabaldon, was leaning in this direction came when Alex was on board her ship. She meets a Spanish man who seems some sort of reincarnation of a man she knew in the future. Because this man looks exactly like him, Alex introduces herself, and they proceed to share a flirtatious friendship. But a bit later, she tells us that the man he seems a body double for was her rapist! So she sees her rapist in another time period and immediately heads straight toward him to flirt? What is this?
Belfrage also puts Alex in a situation where she is forced to allow herself to be raped (it's either that or her husband's life).
And later on, unforgivably, Matthew rapes Alex. There is no mistaking it for the couple enjoying themselves. It is rape, and Belfrage makes this very clear. Thus, I was shocked when a few moments afterward, the two are cozily cuddling in bed, making jokes and laughing together. My shock quickly turned to disgust and outrage as the story moved on, and the incident is never brought up again.
In another scene not so long afterward, the two get into an argument. Alex angrily attempts to walk out, but Matthew violently grabs her, throws her down on the bed, and rapes her. Again, no mistaking this. Alex repeatedly, clearly says "NO." She resists. But everything is glossed over with the idea of "Sure, she said no at first, but that was before she started enjoying it!" Because eventually, Alex stops resisting, as if watering the assault down like this makes it all alright. Afterward, Alex assures the reader that she loves Matthew, and again, the incident never comes up again.
This flippant view of rape, blurring it with consensual sex, is just not right. Does Belfrage believe that rape within a marriage cannot occur? That rape isn't that big of a deal? That most of the time women are overreacting? That rape is okay if a woman only minds at first?
This was a huge issue for me, and though I think it should be for everyone, it is sadly the sort of thing that I see in many books these days. Many readers will most likely react to these scenes with the same nonchalance that the author writes into them, or perhaps hardly even notice anything other than another sex scene.
I certainly will not be looking for the other book in this series. Disappointing.
Thanks nevertheless to Troubador Publishing / Matador and NetGalley.com for providing me with an advance review copy of this book.
elysianfield's review
3.0
3,5 stars
Alex Graham is settling in into the 17th century life with her husband Matthew. Their lives are shattered when Matthew is abducted by the orders of Mathew’s brother and sent to Virginia. Alex is determined to find her husband but it proves to be more difficult than she expected.
It was nice to see how well Alex has settled in into the 17th century and how she reacted to some situations with modern time mind. But I thought it was kind of weird that the people didn’t react more strongly when she acted “unwomanly” and had too modern view of things. Also, she tells Matthew quite freely about things that will happen in the future which I find weird.
Both Alex and Matthew are still likeable and while it was interesting to see them apart and how determined Alex was to save him, I like when they’re together more. And I hope we’ll see Mrs. Gordon again! She was a great character and I liked the relationship that grew between her and Alex. I don’t know how to feel about Alex’s feelings towards Isaac though. I get that he was result from a rape but I still feel it overly harsh that she doesn’t feel anything for the child itself.
It was great to see more about the people Alex left behind in the future and especially her father Magnus. But I wonder if we will see Mercedes at some point? Because if I remember correctly she’s not dead.
Alex Graham is settling in into the 17th century life with her husband Matthew. Their lives are shattered when Matthew is abducted by the orders of Mathew’s brother and sent to Virginia. Alex is determined to find her husband but it proves to be more difficult than she expected.
It was nice to see how well Alex has settled in into the 17th century and how she reacted to some situations with modern time mind. But I thought it was kind of weird that the people didn’t react more strongly when she acted “unwomanly” and had too modern view of things. Also, she tells Matthew quite freely about things that will happen in the future which I find weird.
Both Alex and Matthew are still likeable and while it was interesting to see them apart and how determined Alex was to save him, I like when they’re together more. And I hope we’ll see Mrs. Gordon again! She was a great character and I liked the relationship that grew between her and Alex. I don’t know how to feel about Alex’s feelings towards Isaac though. I get that he was result from a rape but I still feel it overly harsh that she doesn’t feel anything for the child itself.
It was great to see more about the people Alex left behind in the future and especially her father Magnus. But I wonder if we will see Mercedes at some point? Because if I remember correctly she’s not dead.
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