 | Title: Hourglass
 Sexual Content: Kissing Rating:
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Description
One hour to rewrite the past . . .
For seventeen-year-old Emerson Cole, life is about seeing what isn’t there: swooning Southern Belles; soldiers long forgotten; a haunting jazz trio that vanishes in an instant. Plagued by phantoms since her parents’ death, she just wants the apparitions to stop so she can be normal. She’s tried everything, but the visions keep coming back.
So when her well-meaning brother brings in a consultant from a secretive organization called the Hourglass, Emerson’s willing to try one last cure. But meeting Michael Weaver may not only change her future, it may change her past.
Who is this dark, mysterious, sympathetic guy, barely older than Emerson herself, who seems to believe every crazy word she says? Why does an electric charge seem to run through the room whenever he’s around? And why is he so insistent that he needs her help to prevent a death that never should have happened?
A seductive time-slip novel that merges the very best of the paranormal and science fiction genres, Myra McEntire’s Hourglass is a stunning debut from an author to watch.
Review
I often end up regretting picking up books based solely on their covers, but having finished Myra McEntire’s ‘time-slip’ debut HOURGLASS, I’m not regretting a single thing. The story is sort of like a YA version of THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE meets X-Men mashup.
The writing throughout HOURGLASS is very good. Expressive without being overly detailed, provocative without revealing too much, and romantic without loosing sight of the perilous situation. The mystery too was uncovered at just the right pace to keep me completely engrossed in the story without ever becoming impatient. And there were several surprise revelations that flat out shocked me, in a good way.
Emerson was a little prickly for me through most of the book. I understand why she was portrayed that way and even think it was probably very realistic for someone in her situation to be so irritable, but it did prevent me from liking her as much as I wanted to. I also wish that the middle of the book hadn’t introduced so many new characters as I ended up resenting the intrusion to the rest of the story and romance between Em and Michael.
Overall, this was a unique story that blended paranormal and slightly sci-fi elements into a character driven love story. And not just romantic love, but the love between friends, the love between a brother and sister, and the between a father and son. HOURGLASS started off great, lost a little momentum in the middle, but finished strong enough that I’m already anticipating the as-yet-untitled sequel which will be published sometime in 2012.
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