Ruby Red by Kerstin GierMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
So Gwyneth is your ordinary girl turned heroine. Except that she is hilarious and I absolutely adore her best friend, Leslie. More than them, however, I love Great Aunt Maddy who reminds me of "Bewitched" Aunt Clara who is just a few marbles short and collects doorknobs. But Aunt Maddy does not collect doorknobs. I don't think.
Anyway, Gwyneth comes from a long line of time travelers, although the details are very secretive from Gwyneth. Based on her birthday, she is not the chosen one. However, she has a very prissy cousin, Charlotte, who was born on October 7th, the day predestined for the time traveler of this generation to be born. So Charlotte has been groomed for the moment of her first travel through time, at which point she becomes the 12th in the family and makes the circle complete, whatever that means. Charlotte LOVES the specialness of being chosen and throws it in Gwyneth's face as often as she can. Fortunately, Gwyneth doesn't care and doesn't know anything about the chronograph that runs on a drop of blood or the jewels each person represents.
But then there is one teensy, weensy problem. Gwyneth's parents lied about the date of her birth. She also born on October 7th and, oops, she's actually the one that inherited the time travelling gene. Now Charlotte is dethroned and Gwyneth is unprepared and unhappy and thrust into a secret society with stodgy old men (including dead ones who aren't dead in the past) and secrets that no one wants to talk about.
The best part about this book is the dialog and the characters the author has created. Charlotte is a prissy chosen one who has wrath to smear along with her mother as if Gwyneth and her own mother WANTED this curse, I mean blessing. The characters Gwyneth meets in her travels vary from intriguing and loathsome to completely entertaining. And then there's Aunt Maddy, like I mentioned. She's peripheral but well developed.
It's a trilogy so I look forward to the next two installments!
4 comments:
I have been looking forward to catching a review for this book. The beautiful cover caught my eye and the summary intrigued me. I'm so glad to hear you enjoyed it. I'll be putting this one on my to read list.
I almost shrugged off this book based on the book cover. I thought it was going to be some kind of stuffy, historical romance novel. But, your review says otherwise! This books seems so awesome! I've added it to my TO Read list.
- Jackie
I can't wait to read this! It sounds fantastic.
I have to admit that I only looked for your star rating instead of reading the whole review, because this one is next on my review pile! It does my heart good to see that I'll have something to look forward to!
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