Out of Time by Monique Martin
A few weeks ago I was looking for light entertainment, easy to read and not necessarily wholly serious. Out of Time by Monique Martin proclaimed itself a time travel mystery and was free to download from the Kobo site so I decided to give it a go.
Simon Cross is a (British) professor of occult studies at a Californian university. On the fringes of interdisciplinary research - meaning none of the departments really want to claim him - he's content as a crotchetty loner. His graduate student Elizabeth West does her best to smooth the ruffled feathers he leaves in his wake and is sure there's a good man in there somewhere, but so far he's resisted all her friendly overtures. An accidental time hop to 1920s Manhattan means they have to get to know each other better as there's no-one else to rely on when they get the chance to get a bit more practical with their occult researches than either of them was planning on.
As a piece of escapist fun the novel is fine, as long as you don't mind feeling like you've opened a Mills and Boon in error at the start. There's mystery, danger, romance (quite a bit of that actually - if I'd been paying attention to the Kobo categories I would have spotted historical romance as well as historical fantasy), ancient artefacts and the odd paradox. On the whole, it was an enjoyable romp which probably wouldn't stand up to too much scrutiny, but the same could be said for many other time travel novels. Personally I found it a little romance-heavy so not quite my cup of tea. Not that good SF novels never have a will-they-won't-they subplot or main characters in a relationship, but the approach and the language used here did make me think of an out and out romance novel and for that reason I doubt I'd read the others in the series.