Early Review – A Rip Through Time (A Rip Through Time, Book 1) by Kelley Armstrong (3.5/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction/Time Travel
Length: 352 pages
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Release Date: May 31, 2022
ASIN: B09CNFSLFG
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the A Rip Through Time series
Source: eGalley from NetGalley
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
“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.”
Series Info/Source: This is the first book in A Rip Through Time series. I got an eGalley of this book to review through NetGalley.
Thoughts: I am a huge Armstrong fan and really enjoyed her Rockton series and her Nadia Stafford series. I enjoyed the premise behind this story, however I thought the middle was very slow. We spent a lot of time in the main protagonist’s head listening to her hash and rehash theories and it felt very drawn out. I almost put the book down and stopped reading it all together because I just didn’t care. The story does pick up again towards the end and I enjoyed how it wrapped up.
The premise is a fun one. A modern day homicide detective, Mallory, gets sent back in time and ends up as a Victorian house maid. She gets caught up in trying to solve both some Victorian murders and in figuring out how they tie into the mystery of the person that attacked her in modern times. I enjoyed most of the characters, but they are kept at a distance for most of the story. I was finally starting to engage with them when the book ended. The whole time travel aspect seems very random and is never explained.
My Summary (3.5/5): Overall this wasn’t my favorite Armstrong book. It had a fun premise and some interesting elements but it moved too slow for me. I also never engaged with the characters that well until later in the book. They are intriguing characters, they are just held apart from the reader. I don’t plan on continuing with the series.
