Timepiece
Myra McEntire
Egmont, June 2012
Source: Borrowed from my friend Karen at FWIW Reviews
Buy it from Amazon.com: Timepiece: An Hourglass Novel
This review contains spoilers about the romance in Timepiece, but no plot spoilers.
Kaleb's life is a teensy bit complicated. As he puts it, "my dad had recently come back from the dead, my mom was in a coma, and an entire battalion of Civil War soldiers had appeared on my front porch that very afternoon" (pg 3). Kaleb is friends with Emerson Cole, the female protagonist of the first book in the series, Hourglass, and though Kaleb has some barely-buried feelings for her, he knows that she's better off with his best friend Michael. Emerson and Michael are genuinely worried about Kaleb's tendency to solve all his (admittedly serious) issues by using alcohol, because their collective problems related to time-travel are only getting worse. Their world is turned upside down with the return of Jack Landers, the man who once killed Kaleb's father. After Jack's reappearance, a dangerous guy named Poe delivers an ominous message: the Hourglass organization must find Jack Landers or everyone will suffer dire consequences.
There's so much to like about this book, and I'm doing my utmost to avoid spoilers, other than those related to the romance, so here we go!
I love seeing guy-POV, especially in YA, and it's even better if the guy in question genuinely sounds male and not like what girls would like to think that guys sound like. And Kaleb's definitely a dude. He's a womanizer with both a soft side and a mean streak. Sometimes his flirting is pure instinct, but sometimes it's done to keep his heart of gold from showing, or even to keep his intense temper from flaring. Kaleb can sense others' emotions and his empathic abilities make him even more volatile, but he's not quite a loose canon because he genuinely worries about others and has a lot of surprisingly gentlemanly tendencies. How could anyone not love this character?
Kaleb's got a lot of growing to do, and it's great to watch him on his personal journey. I particularly like his relationship with his parents, because he's incredibly close to his mother, who may never wake up from her coma. Kaleb also loves his dad, but they aren't 100% communicative with each other. Kaleb feels doubly upset at his buddy Michael because not only did Michael got Emerson, Kaleb also thinks his own dad would prefer to have the upstanding Michael as his son. He partly gets this idea because Liam Ballard treats Michael like an adult and treats Kaleb like a kid who needs protecting. These sorts of loving, intensely complicated family relationships make any book more interesting, in my opinion.
As for the romance, it's just as compelling as Michael and Em's connection in book one, if not more so. Emerson's best friend Lily walks into Kaleb's life because she has the supernatural ability to find objects, and now the Hourglass organization needs her to find a time-travelling person--Jack. Lily is smart, talented, sassy, and I love her interaction with Kaleb. Lily's just the kind of straightforward, no-nonsense girl who can help a guy like Kaleb see past his own issues and focus on the big picture. And besides all that, they're just really a dreamy couple.
Downsides: The technicalities and specifics of time travel went a little over my head. I don't want to be the kind of reader that authors have to dumb down their story for, but on occasion it was tough to keep with all the rules of how rips, veils, travel genes, and exotic matter worked.
Overall, Timepiece is a great and emotionally moving follow-up to the stunning debut book that was Hourglass. I had my doubts about how well switching POVs would work for the series, but it ends up being a delightful way to give us readers a look at Kaleb's world, which everyone wanted to see. I highly recommend this novel. Grade: A-
Question for everyone: Have you read Hourglass? Are you as big a fan of Myra as I am? :-) What do you think of timeslip/time travel YA in general?
Book Review: Timepiece (Hourglass #2) by Myra McEntire Link Free Download
