DNF Audiobook Review – Timebound (The Chronos Files, Book 1) by Rysa Walker, Narrated by Kate Rudd (2/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 12 hours and 7 minutes (374 pages)
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Release Date: January 1, 2014
ASIN: B00H7KCBZI
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in The Chronos Files
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 2/5 stars
“When Kate Pierce-Keller’s grandmother gives her a strange blue medallion and speaks of time travel, sixteen-year-old Kate assumes the old woman is delusional. But it all becomes horrifyingly real when a murder in the past destroys the foundation of Kate’s present-day life. Suddenly, that medallion is the only thing protecting Kate from blinking out of existence.
Kate learns that the 1893 killing is part of something much more sinister, and her genetic ability to time travel makes Kate the only one who can fix the future. Risking everything, she travels back in time to the Chicago World’s Fair to try to prevent the murder and the chain of events that follows.
Changing the timeline comes with a personal cost – if Kate succeeds, the boy she loves will have no memory of her existence. And regardless of her motives, does Kate have the right to manipulate the fate of the entire world?”
This is the first book in the Chronos Files series. I have had this book to read for quite some time and was excited to finally get to read it. I ended up stopping the book about 30% of the way through; I just could not stand the main protagonist and the awful decisions she kept making.
I listened to this on audiobook and the narration was decent; I didn’t have any issues with the audiobook quality.
This starts out as a fairly typical YA paranormal read; in this case Kate finds out she has a time-traveling gene that allows her to travel through time. Of course, only she can fix the timeline that her grandfather is messing up.
Kate makes one bad decision after another throughout the beginning of the book. She does stuff that literally makes you roll your eyes in exasperation. I was getting so frustrated with her that I started to hope that maybe something bad would happen to her or she would mysteriously die and give someone else some page space.
The storyline is also incredibly predictable and contrived; there is no originality here at all. I rarely stop listening to audiobooks, but this one was frustrating me so bad I just had to stop.
Overall this was just a bad book. The writing, the characters, the story, all of it was pretty awful. I would not recommend. If you are interested in a YA series featuring time travel check out Kerstin Gier’s Precious Stone trilogy; that is a much better series that features a young heroine with a time-traveling gene.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Goodreads Reading Challenge
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge