Sandy M’s review of Time Storm by Samantha Winston
Erotic Romance ebook novella released by Ellora’s Cave 1 Nov 09 (reissue)

I’m a huge time travel fan, so that’s why I wanted to read this book for review. It’s a good thing there’s definitely some time traveling in this ebook because that’s about the only thing that worked.

Now, I know this is also an erotica and love scenes need to be more graphic, as well as the language than other genres.  But the way certain words are used over and over again, one right after the other with no variation page after page , and it’s not romantic, it’s not sexy, and it’s definitely not erotic. And the fact that we don’t get to know the hero and heroine that well from the beginning sets the tone for a story that never rises much beyond putting pornographic words on paper just for the sake of doing it . Giving a prologue about the heroine, in disguise, climbing through the hero’s window in the dead of night, blindfolding him, and then proceeding to screw his brains out because he’s leaving the next morning and she may never see him again for quite a while isn’t what a reader needs to get to know the lead characters. At least not this reader.

After that night Ian is lost at sea and for years Heather is lost herself, inconsolable after hearing the news of his death. Deciding it’s finally time to move on with her life, she makes the trip to the island where Ian died, hoping that being in that place will help her along. However, she ends up caught in a storm and when she awakens, she finds herself in another time being rescued by a shipful of pirates. It must be a tour ship and these crazy men are doing their job quite well. Or so Heather tries to tell herself.

But then she comes face to face with their captain and he’s the mirror image of her Ian. Come to find out, the captain’s name is also Ian and he can’t remember a thing before ten years ago when he was rescued pretty much as Heather just was.  It doesn’t take long for them to hit the sheets and that’s when his memories rush back to Ian, how he was lost at sea, his rescue, and of course he remembers Heather, both as the young girl who followed him everywhere and as the woman who came to him that last night, even despite her efforts to keep that from him.

The actual time travel part of this story isn’t all that bad. It’s a little see-through, you figure out quite early on what’s going to happen. But I never felt invested in these characters because I just never got to know them well. The twist at the end is pretty good and about the best thing in the book, but that’s simply not enough to pull this books from such depths of nothingness. I just wish the author would have taken less time with the so-called erotic part of the story and instead give us more about Ian and Heather. It would have made the whole thing so much better.

Grade: F

Summary:

Ian’s loss at sea left Heather shattered. Now she’s come to say goodbye. But her love defies time, and a sudden storm transports her to 1770…and Ian.

Read an excerpt.