Book #15: Intertwine by Nichole Van

Emme is a normal twenty-first-century woman, working on her PhD in history and in love with the Regency period. She's also not very normal--she finds a nineteenth-century locket with a picture of a man inside, and insists that she feels a strong connection to him and that they are meant to be together. She spends years obsessing about this man in the locket and ends up going to England to research more about him and see if she can finally find out who he is so that she can get him out of her head. While there, she falls into a magic time portal and ends up in 1812, where she meets James and ends up falling in love and needing to decide what to do--should she give up her life in 2012 or give up James?

Honestly, a lot of the premises of this book are a little bit of a stretch. Or, a LOT of a stretch. I found the beginning of the book, where Emme is just obsessing about the locket and this mystery, 200-year-old man, really weird. No matter how normal Emme may seem later on, that really goes beyond my scope of imagination. Also, the whole time travel thing--not that it's SUPPOSED to be believable, but it seems way too convenient for the storyline. However, I really like that the time travel aspect allows Emme to be a modern woman living in a historical period, because a lot of the historical romance novels you read have these heroines who are far too spunky, independent, and outspoken to be believable for the Regency period. Time traveling really helps to negate that problem. Another issue I had was that Emme had amnesia after she got to 1812 and couldn't remember anything about herself, allowing her and James to fall in love without the complication of knowing she was from the 21st century--and again, seeming a little too convenient. But lastly, I felt like the clashing of these two eras happened a little too neatly. Once Emme regained her memory, she just told James she was from the future, showed him her tablet, let him play Angry Birds, and he had no problems understanding or fathoming or imagining what she was saying. It really seems like it should have been a lot more unbelievable for him to hear that his love interest was from 200 years in the future, and that all the technology and advances she showed him or described to him should have been a lot more intimidating and difficult for him to understand.

And even after all of those complaints with this book--I REALLY liked it. I thought the characters were fantastic--Emme and James were well-rounded and I like how they complemented each other well. The book was full of all their thoughts and their longings for each other, which works for the romance (although Van seems very fond of talking about how "her fingers were searing through his gloves", etc.--a little over the top). But it was a perfectly clean romance and a pretty satisfying ending with how they wrapped up the issue of which-century-should-we-live-in and staying together. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it!