Review: Timebound by Rysa Walker

Timebound by Rysa Walker

Published January 1st 2014

I’d never heard of this book before but when I randomly came upon it when browsing audio books, I thought the cover was really cool. I’m not a massive fan of time travel but I wanted to give Timebound a fair chance.

Timebound is about a girl named Kate who’s long lost grandma suddenly comes back into her life after a decade of absence. She gives Kate a strange glowing blue medallion and starts talking about time travel. When things start getting weird and dangerous, Kate learns she has the genetic ability to time travel and she has to travel back to Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and change a chain of events and possibly change the modern day world as she knows it, including erasing the memory of herself from the mind of the boy, Kiernan, that she loves.

Timebound starts off with a really confusing prologue. I was so weirded out and I was hoping that the whole book wouldn’t be as confusing as the prologue. Luckily, it straightened out once it got past the prologue.

I thought the writing style was really good. It was really smooth and even though I read this as an audio book, it went really quick for a book that’s 366 pages. I think the overall reading time was about 6 hours. I always love it when books are written in a way that makes even the longest book become a quick read. And Rysa Walker definitely wrote this book to be a quick read.

I tend to find books with time travel to be either really complicated or really unrealistic. I thought Timebound was right in the middle. It was kind of over complicated at times. I thought the concept of the genetic ability to time travel was both original and mildly ridiculous. I mean, I want to be able to see a way that I can time travel. I’m pretty sure I don’t have the genetics to time travel so that was kind of a downer.

And Kate’s grandma dumps so much information on Kate (and the reader) in such a short amount of time that I felt myself drifting off. I started to concentrate more on playing Animal Crossing then all the info that Kate’s grandma was dumping on me and her. I wish all the  information could have been spread out more so I could really take it all in better.

The characters are all fairly okay.  Kate is a pretty general character.  Actually, all the characters are pretty standard Young Adult characters. I didn’t find Kate to be extremely annoying but I also didn’t fall in love with her. She wasn’t abnormally interesting or different.

The thing I hated about this book is how the author turned Kate into a complete idiot when ever she was around Kiernan. Early in the book we learn that Kate has experience in martial arts but somehow, whenever a boy is around to save her, she can’t save herself. She becomes so helpless and I hated that.

I wish the overall story had been more about Kate saving the world and kicking butt instead of such a romance. I wish it focused more on Kate and not Kiernan and Kate.

I did like how much the author described the settings and clothes. It really helped me get a good picture of Chicago in 1893. The author clearly did a  great deal of research and it really showed.

Overall, this was a good read. I enjoyed listening to it and it was fun. I was mildly annoyed at times with the author’s choices with the main character but I didn’t hate the overall character. There isn’t really anything that stands out with this book though. It’s a fun, fast read but there’s nothing extremely memorable about the characters or plot. The writing is really good and I appreciate how much research Rysa Walker put into the book. However, I doubt I’ll be continuing with the series. If you’re a massive fan of time travel, I do recommend this book. But if you’re looking for really memorable characters or a really stand out plot,  you might want to skip this one.