Spark

I really enjoyed reading this book. The writing was mostly error free and the story was well put together. A plot to keep you interested with characters that you connect with. It was unique and entertaining to say the least. I would recommend this book for sure.

Reviewed by Amber Koch

Elizabethan fantasy...engaging and educational. Wonderful combination of brain science, friendship, love, perseverance, thunderstorms, caring, and romance. The read had me thinking Avatar, Game of Thrones, and heavy clothing. So very different from a typical romance. In my opinion, that is a good thing! Fire trucking good!

Reviewed by I O

I just read the blurb now and I realized how much of the plot it reveals. I think a huge part of my enjoyment of the book rested in not knowing much about it other than it's a Catherine Friend and there's time travel. And in my mind, Catherine Friend + time travel = great adventure. As anyone can see from my rating, that formula still holds true. :)

Artist Jamie Maddox finds herself coerced by her long time girlfriend into volunteering for an unusual experiment in looking for and documenting the physical presence of "consciousness" inside her brain. An unfortunate confluence of factors sends her into the past, specifically, the year 1560 A.D. And not just anywhere, but into the court of the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth. Jamie realizes soon enough that she isn't bodily in the past, but only her consciousness has transferred. Upon awakening from the experiment, her initial reaction had been--Is she in some kind of elaborate movie production? With movie sets so realistic that they reek of sweat, unwashed bodies and putrid rivers? It seems much more logically just a recreation of her subconscious, Tudor-fascinated mind and she is simply in a coma. But is her knowledge of the Tudors that good and detailed that she can invent historical characters' faces, foods, smells, arcane words and even entire incidents, wholesale?

More disconcerting, the body isn't hers. She can't even eat without spilling food on her half-exposed breasts. Even worse, the person who owns it may not be a simple lady-in-waiting, but an ambitious, devious, scheming woman who may be involved in some nefarious plot that will mess up history as we know it.

Can Jamie get back to her time? Can she even get back to her own body? Does she even want to? Witnessing history in the making right beside England's most important ruler doesn't seem so bad. Ang the youthful Queen Elizabeth is such a fascinating woman.

It's a race against time, the weather, and a woman who's enjoying the future just a bit too much to give it up.

...This is my new favorite Catherine Friend. I loved the The Spanish Pearl and its sequel The Crown of Valencia for their audacious plots, but this is just as intriguing, and much more fun and upbeat... And, I just found a whole new way to curse out loud without offending anyone. ;)

Other aspects I loved about the book:
- a glimpse into what the "real" 16th century London was like and not the romanticized versions we get from books and movies (The truth? it stinks!)
- a close-up and behind-the-scenes look at the newly-crowned Elizabeth, in turns wily and unsure and sometimes needing to seek validation, before she became the formidable Queen
- bits of arcane history/court politics--always more entertaining than the dry stuff we get in school
- a sweet romance that I wasn't even sure had started and simply had no idea how it would end, until much later(view spoiler))

Bottom line, get this if you love history, a bit of speculative fiction and great adventure. And the bonus of a sweet love story to boot.

Reviewed by Allison Never

As someone who loves history and especially history involving royal families, this book was just perfect. It was a slow burning romance, which only really came out in the last 30% or so, the story before that was interesting and full of history...

I loved that most of the historic facts were real and Cathrine Friend build a story around true events. This timeframe and Queen Elisabeth I is just fascinating and I felt this book was a great history lesson wrapt up in a story to enjoy. ...

The characters were portrait in a very realistic way and the author did a great job in changing the characters from 1560 to 2017 and how different people talked and acted. The writing style was marvelous and it was hard to put the book down.

Reviewed by Andrea Zupanc