TITLE & AUTHOR: A Murder In Time by Julie McElwainI read this for the Big Library Read, the global e-book club run by Overdrive. WHAT'S IT'S ABOUT PUBLISHER: Pegasus Books
OPENING EDITION: KoboWHAT I THOUGHT
PUBLISHED: 11 April 2016PAGES: 320
SOURCE: Digital Library Book
Beautiful and brilliant, Kendra Donovan is a rising star at the FBI. Yet her path to professional success hits a speed bump during a disastrous raid where half her team is murdered, a mole in the FBI is uncovered and she herself is severely wounded. As soon as she recovers, she goes rogue and travels to England to assassinate the man responsible for the deaths of her teammates.
While fleeing from an unexpected assassin herself, Kendra escapes into a stairwell that promises sanctuary but when she stumbles out again, she is in the same place - Aldrich Castle - but in a different time: 1815, to be exact.
Mistaken for a lady's maid hired to help with weekend guests, Kendra is forced to quickly adapt to the time period until she can figure out how she got there; and, more importantly, how to get back home. However, after the body of a young girl is found on the extensive grounds of the county estate, she starts to feel there's some purpose to her bizarre circumstances. Stripped of her twenty-first century tools, Kendra must use her wits alone in order to unmask a cunning madman.
He was in hell.
A Murder in Time disappointed me. I love time travel novels or novels that have time shifts and such. The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is one of my favourite novels. I really expected to enjoy this novel. It just didn't work for me. The core of the novel, Kendra travelling back to 1815 doesn't happen for quite a while. A lot of pages are wasted building up Kendra as a character, developing her back story and the case that puts her on the path to ending up back in 1815. A lot of this felt like unnecessary backstory and I got bored a few times. The novel reminded me too much of Outlander. I've never read the books but I've seen the TV series. I know writers are inspired by the work of other writer's but I was hoping for something a little more original. There are some things about 1815 that don't add up. Kendra would have been put firmly in her place and not allowed to speak to anyone, especially men the way she does. The murder of a prostitute would not have caused so much fuss. A Murder in Time is a good idea but isn't executed as well as it could have been.
