Review: The Hourglass Door (Hourglass Door Trilogy #1) by Lisa Mangum

The Hourglass Door by Lisa Mangum

Copy Courtesy of Shadow Mountain Press
Already Released

Summary
Abby's life is pretty good; she's got a very nice boyfriend, an assistant director position at her high school, and she's going to go to the same college as her best friend. Of course, perfect things are meant to be broken, and when Dante, the new foreign exchange student, enters her life things go a little weird. In fact, the world itself may be threatened by a centuries old time travelling machine.

Commentary
Ok, the author managed to bring Leonardo Da Vinci into this, and for some reason, that made the whole book better (despite it's likely gimmicky-ness). Of course, I'm fascinated by time travel in general so that helped too although the time travelling itself didn't actually play that big of a role.

I enjoyed the mystery surrounding Dante especially because it didn't go with recent popular paranormal themes and also the slightly surreal tone to the book. The romance also grew slowly and somewhat more realistically which is always a plus in my book. I do consider this book to fall more towards fantasy rather than science fiction despite the time travel.

My only real gripe with the book was the ending. It seemed so devoid of even little happinesses that even though I know there are books following which will likely rectify that feeling, I can't help but be disappointed, and less than stellar endings tend to break the spell of the book for me. Yes, I'm a hard woman to please, but I'm looking forward to reading the next book.

Star Rating: 3.5/5.0

For an explanation of the Star Rating go here.

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