Love Kurland time travel books.One Magic Moment is not one of her better ones, but still a pretty good read. 3.5/5 ( )

***NOTE MY REVIEWS OFTEN CONTAIN SPOILERS***

Heartbroken and barely holding on after the recent loss of her sister to a medieval highland knight, Tess Alexander almost comes undone when she encounters the new owner of the local garage, John de Piaget, the twin brother of the man her sister married in the past. Something about the beautiful Tess unnerves John who’s worked very hard to keep his past a secret. It’s not so much that she asks too many personal questions, it’s something about her that he can’t explain. Torn between a fierce attraction and a strong desire to keep the other at bay the two engage in a wary interaction, that is until they find themselves thrust into John’s past at the hands of someone who wishes them harm. But can they fess up to the truth and discover who’s stalking them before it’s too late?

Ok not my best synopsis ever, but again I had trouble finding the right words which seems to be an affliction of late when writing reviews. It probably has something to do with the attention span of a gnat and getting distracted in the middle of writing the review. Who knows?

I only had three things I really didn’t like about this series. The first is a small irritation and that’s the fact that the main character has sisters named Peaches and Cinderella. While I guess it fits with the children of hippies scenario and I can actually picture crazy hippies using names like that for their children considering the names they used for themselves, I still found a person being called Peaches throughout the duration of the novel highly distracting. Honestly if Peaches gets her own novel, I can’t see myself as a reader being able to take her seriously as a character. If that was my name I would have changed it the second I turned eighteen.

The second thing I disliked about the novel troubled me more than the first. Usually though adult romance writers have series, they’re easy to read as standalone novels and though they might refer to something else that happened in the series it doesn’t usually happen toward the beginning of the novel and when it is mentioned it’s explained enough that you don’t need to have read that novel to find yourself engaged in this one. While I have read another of the time travel romances by Lynn Kurland, the only other title of hers that I’ve had in my possession was My Heart Stood Still and is not really all that related to this title. Though I loved My Heart Stood Still which is the reason I purchased One Magic Moment when I saw it on Double Day, I haven’t really kept up with the books in between that one and this one. In my roundabout way what I’m trying to say is that because I didn’t read One Enchanted Evening before reading One Magic Moment I found myself thoroughly confused through a lot of the beginning of the book and if I hadn’t found the characters so interesting I probably wouldn’t have kept reading. When a book so thoroughly relies on a previous title for its storyline and it’s not common in the genre the writer specializes in I think there should be some sort of disclaimer in the beginning of the book telling the reader you really need to read the other book before reading this one. That way said reader doesn’t have a lot of huh moments when trying to get into the story.

The final thing I didn’t like about the book is there isn’t a lot of interaction with the villain. You know vaguely that somewhere in the story is a villain because of short scenes here and there but other than forcing the couple back into the past, stealing a sword and cutting a break line that pretty much covers all the big villainy until the bad guy is unmasked and dispatched of. He was so played down that he didn’t really come across as much of a threat. If I’m really supposed to be frightened for these characters then I need a little more suspense in the villain. And to be honest, the villain’s role was so small that I’m not really sure he was needed to tell the story and still have it be a good page turner in the genre it’s written for.

The book is fairly fast paced which I enjoyed and while I don’t normally mention this in a review I have to say I absolutely loved the cover. The cover is definitely what made the book stand out on the Double Day Website. It caught my attention; I recognized the author and it ended up in my shopping cart. I felt the book was well written with nicely fleshed out characters. Though he doesn’t get a lot of play in the book I have to say Roland was one of my favorite characters, the roles he plays in the past and present are needless to say intriguing. I would have liked to know more about him, though I don’t really foresee him getting a title of his own considering his age when the book ends. The writer did an excellent job of weaving storylines between the present and the past. She’s written an excellent time travel romance with castles, knights and sports cars all neatly rolled into one very interesting novel. I would definitely be interested in reading more of the series though from this point on I think I’ll make it an effort to collect the titles in order so I don’t encounter so much confusion in reading the novel. I would definitely recommend this book, though I advise picking up One Enchanted Evening first even though I personally haven’t read that title yet. It will most likely save you a lot of the confusion I faced when reading the novel. ( )

pb ( )