Hourglass by Myra McEntire

Hourglass by Myra McEntire
Fantasy, 400 pages
June 14th 2011 from Egmont USA

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?

Full of atmosphere, mystery, and romance, Hourglass merges the very best of the paranormal and science-fiction genres in a seductive, remarkable young adult debut.

I'm not entirely sure what I want to say to you about this one.  It had its high and low points, as all books do, and in the end it left me feeling a little middle of the road.  I think a few years ago, I may have loved this, but now I feel so used to this story (even though I hadn't read it) that it didn't leave much of an impression.

Here's the thing: I find the ideas behind the book really interesting.  I like timeslip novels conceptually because I find the whole thing fascinating.  It's then down to whether or not the concept is carried off well, and in this case, it was.  As a time travel book, it worked for me and was interesting.  Yes, the "time gene" and all that was a little muddled.  I had my questions, assuredly.  But they didn't bother me too much, and I thought the different ways the "time gene" could manifest was very interesting.  So it wasn't the crux of the story that sort of threw me off.

Unfortunately, it was sort of the characters.  And here's where it gets tricky, and why I'm not sure what I want to say about the book.  I liked the characters themselves for the most part.  I liked Emerson, I thought she was fun and spunky.  I liked Michael, though he was maybe a little flat (I don't particularly care for flawless men. Strange, I know.)  I really liked Emerson's best friend, Lily, and am curious to see where her storyline goes.  I liked Emerson's brother and his wife, Michael's friends and colleagues.  I seemed to pretty much like them all. And yet...they didn't quite work for me.  I don't know how to explain it; it was partly that I never really felt too much of a connection with them, and it was partly that they were a little  one-dimensional, save those who turned out to be super-crazy.  (Like, no joke.  Cat-petting, mustache-twirling, hyena-cackling, Bond villain, bald-Brittany cray-cray.)  For whatever reason, I just never found myself completely invested in their stories, for the most part.  There were moments where I would just start to become attached, and then I would lose the thread.  They were never real to me.

Part of this, I think, was because of the insta-love storyline.  I have to hand it to McEntire, she certainly tried to make insta-love believable and gave it some legitimate scientific reasoning, which made me not loathe it the way I generally would.  (She gave it some good lustiness, too, which didn't hurt.)  But it remains one of my biggest pet peeves regardless, so I can't entirely let it slide.  And I think it was part of what made me disconnect from the characters.  As soon as you get into insta-love, can't live without you, saying I love you and meaning it fanatically in a matter of minutes hours days, I stop believing that you are in any way real.  Don't get me wrong, I know there are people out there who completely act like that, but I don't think they're real, either (I think they're crazy).  I am a jaded hardcore bitch cynic, so this whole immediate twoo wuv thing just cancels out a lot of my WSOD.    So, there, I guess.  That's a big part of my disconnect. (Coupled with the caricatures that developed at the end.)

So in the end, I guess it was a bit of a balancing act, trying to decide if the plot and the time-travel and the character-aspects I did like outweighed the things I didn't.  And it ended up a pretty balanced scale.  I don't see it as a book I will be pushing people to go out and read nao, but it won't be one I'll discourage people from reading, either.  It ended with an interesting basis for further books in the series, so I likely will read them, even if I won't rush to buy them.  The idea of time paradoxes and the multi-history lines, coupled with the consequences of changing the timeline provides fascinating potential, and the revelations of Emerson's past, and any revelations that I think may be to come, will likely keep me reading, even if the books don't end up on the top of my stack.


Check out my interview with Myra here.
And don't forget, you can enter to win a copy of this here (ends 11/5/11)

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