Book #16: Divine by Nichole Van

Divine is the sequel to Intertwine, featuring James's sister Georgiana, her longtime friend Sebastian, and a lot more time travel. Georgiana traveled to the 21st century in Intertwine because she was dying of consumption, and was cured by the magic of modern medicine. She stayed in the 21st century and was mostly happy there until she found an old love letter, written in 1813--by herself. She knows she has to go back to the past to investigate this letter and find out who she loves so deeply. At the same time, her childhood friend Sebastian, who's always been in love with her, is looking for her to convince her to marry him--but nobody seems to know where she's gone. Georgiana returns to 1813 and finds Sebastian, gets mixed up in a mystery, and all sorts of romantic and time-travel hijinks happen. (Spoiler alert: she ends up in love with Sebastian at the end. Unbelievable, right?)

My only complaints with this book are similar to Intertwine--mainly, the characters (particularly the 1813 characters coming to 2013) seem to transition far too easily from the past to the present without too much culture shock or surprise at how things have changed in two centuries. I feel like it should be way more of a big deal to go forward 200 years. (But I guess she wants to focus more on the romance than on the time travel deal, so I get it, kind of.) For only having lived in the present for one year, it is kind of unbelievable how much Georgiana has transitioned to being a "modern" woman, being all concerned about going back to the nineteenth century where women aren't equal. It also always annoys me when there's a boy in love with a girl and the girl somehow fails to notice it for YEARS and years. It really seems unlikely that a girl would be completely oblivious to the fact that someone is in love with her. But Georgiana eventually figures it out, and figures out her feelings about Sebastian (which, according to her thoughts, are a lot related to the fact that he's a very good-looking manly man, more than anything else), and they work things out in the end. Despite these issues, I really liked this book too and rushed through it really fast to figure out how they would resolve it.