Monday, June 27, 2022

A Rip Through Time

Title: A Rip Through Time
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Published: May 31st 2022 by Minotaur Books
Format: Kindle, Hardcover, 352 pages
Genre: Historical Time Travel
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Series: A Rip Through Time #1

First Sentence: My grandmother is dying, and I am getting coffee.

Blurb: May 20, 2019: Homicide detective Mallory is in Edinburgh to be with her dying grandmother. While out on a jog one evening, Mallory hears a woman in distress. She’s drawn to an alley, where she is attacked and loses consciousness.

May 20, 1869: Housemaid Catriona Mitchell had been enjoying a half-day off, only to be discovered that night in a lane, where she’d been strangled and left for dead . . . exactly one-hundred-and-fifty years before Mallory was strangled in the same spot.

When Mallory wakes up in Catriona's body in 1869, she must put aside her shock and adjust quickly to the reality: life as a housemaid to an undertaker in Victorian Scotland. She soon discovers that her boss, Dr. Gray, also moonlights as a medical examiner and has just taken on an intriguing case, the strangulation of a young man, similar to the attack on herself. Her only hope is that catching the murderer can lead her back to her modern life . . . before it's too late. (GoodReads)

My Opinion: Not a fan of time travel novels, but a fan of Kelley Armstrong, I decided to suspend belief and took a chance on modern-day Homicide Detective Mallory Atkinson of Vancouver, Canada, jumping back 150 years and taking over the body of housemaid Catriona Mitchell in 1869 Edinburgh, Scotland.

It took me a little longer than usual to get into the rhythm of this book. I first had to figure out how to pronounce Catriona (Katrina) since Google gave two options, neither of which seemed right, and it was frustrating. Then I had to accept that if no one else in 1869 had an issue with Catriona and her strange use of words, investigative knowledge, and farfetched story, I would let it go.

In this series, you will find Armstrong’s humor. How do you not laugh at a person trying desperately to fit in but making wrong decisions and using modern phrases?

By the end, I couldn’t tell if I enjoyed Mallory/Catriona or Isla (eye-la) more. Their companionship and shared humor made this a book hard to put down.

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