Rambling About.. Janet B Taylor's Into The Dim

Title: Into The Dim
Author: Janet B. Taylor
Publication: 1 March 2016 - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
First Line: Everyone in town knew the coffin was empty. I think that's what packed the pews - the pure curiosity of the thing.
Favorite Line: (maybe not my FAVORITE favorite since there were a freaking ton of them ... but the first one I scribbled down in my notebook:) Aged leather and old paper. The library smelled like Shakespeare. It smelled like my mom. (p 25)

Ramble: Seriously, though? If you know me you probably know that I love time travel. I grew up on Doctor Who and Time Bandits and Timeline have been two of my favorite movies ever. I marathon read the first book in the Outlander series and have only put off on reading more because I then fell in love with the show and don't want to spoil it. When I got the notice from NetGalley about Into The Dim being available and saw that there was a blip on the cover from Outlander's Diana Gabaldon I figured "eh ... why not?" I'm very hit or miss with YA reads but 1) It was free. 2) No one would yell at me for not finishing it if it blew. 3) Scotland. 4) Time Travel.

Just add those last two together. Time travel and Scotland. It's like David Tennant ... and Gerard Butler ... and Sean Connery ... and I just thought to myself "gosh this book had better not blow."

The Amazon blurb tells the basics (of course):

When fragile, sixteen-year-old Hope Walton loses her mom to an earthquake overseas, her secluded world crumbles. Agreeing to spend the summer in Scotland, Hope discovers that her mother was more than a brilliant academic, but also a member of a secret society of time travelers. Trapped in the twelfth century in the age of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hope has seventy-two hours to rescue her mother and get back to their own time. Along the way, her path collides with that of a mysterious boy who could be vital to her mission . . . or the key to Hope’s undoing.      Addictive, romantic, and rich with historical detail, Into the Dim is an Outlander for teens. 

And I know it says it's "an Outlander for teens" but .... eh .... not so much. Yeah, there's a girl ... there's time travel ... there's Scotland. That's about it.  Into The Dim reminds me soooo much more of the 2003 movie Timeline. Holy heck how I love that movie and have watched it dozens of times over the years. (And no .... not because of Paul Walker. He was great but I've been more of an Ethan Embry girl ever since he did All I Want For Christmas with a little Thora Birch and Leslie Neilson as Santa  -- several years prior to his awesomeness in Empire Records.) I guess the movie was based on a book by Michael Crichton which, somehow, I only JUST found out. Yeah. I need to get my grubby mitts on it.

Yeah. I got distracted. Sorry. Be glad that I didn't take the time to post Time Bandits, too. Oh. Fine. But just one.   And no ... Robin Hood really has nothing at all to do with anything ... it's just a funny clip. Okay, okay. Back to the book. So, eight months after her mom is presumed dead in an earthquake Hope is shipped off to Scotland to her aunt's and finds out that her mom wasn't really at the earthquake site but is a time travel and has been left behind at the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine. "Eleanor of huh?" Get thee to a library, kids.  It had to be done. In order to try and save her, Hope must go back to the twelfth century. From the descriptions of the trip, no doubt she wished she had Hermione's Time Turner. C'mon ... Rowling lives in Scotland ... and there are HP references in the book ... and ...  Once in 1154 London not only do Hope and her fellow travelers meet Eleanor, but also Thomas Becket  and King Henry II (my fingers are ITCHING to put a Burton/O'Toole clip here. ITCHING, I say!). The historical details and descriptions are phenomenal without being too overbearing. (You know how sometimes you can be reading something TOO descriptive? Like "Yes, we KNOW already! The freaking grass was green!") Granted, some bits I felt could have been maybe not mentioned quite as much as the were. Taylor more or less beat a dead horse with how poorly women were treated and how much worse the Jewish women had it and yadda yadda yadda .... but, luckily, the good far outweighed the bad and I'm already excited about the fact that there'll be at least one sequel!