Publisher: Egmont
Pages: 336pgs
The Story
A threat from the past could destroy the future.
And the clock is ticking . . .
Kaleb Ballard's relentless flirting is interrupted when Jack Landers, the man who tried to murder his father, timeslips in and attacks before disappearing just as quickly. But Kaleb has never before been able to see time travelers, unlike many of his friends associated with the mysterious Hourglass organization. Are Kaleb's powers expanding, or is something very wrong?
Then the Hourglass is issued an ultimatum. Either they find Jack and the research he's stolen on the time gene, or time will be altered with devastating results.
Now Kaleb, Emerson, Michael, and the other Hourglass recruits have no choice but to use their unusual powers to find Jack. But where do they even start? And when? And even if they succeed, it may not be enough . . .
The follow-up to Hourglass, Timepiece blends the paranormal, science fiction, mystery, and suspense genres into a nonstop thrill ride where every second counts.
The Review
TIMEPIECE is the second installment of Myra McEntire's young adult series and it picks up shortly after the events of the previous book, Hourglass. Now Hourglass was one of my absolute favourite books from 2011 and I was literally dying to get my hands on its sequel, which I knew would blow me away because I loved the author's writing and her characterization. However, despite what the cover implies, this book isn't told from Emerson's perspective, the main narrator of the first book, but rather it's told from Kaleb's perspective, a supporting character we know all too well from the book, Hourglass. I'm sure many readers of this particular book can agree with me when I say that this new perspective took me a quite while to get used to but it did - eventually - improve as the story went along. But with that being said, I still would've preferred Emerson telling this tale because I really, really missed her voice and I could relate to her more I ever could with Kaleb for some pretty obvious reasons. He's a boy and all. Still, even though this book wasn't as compelling as the first and at times I often felt like people were running around for no reason at all, but I, on a whole, thought it was a great follow-up of one of my favourite books.
Bad boy persona. Heart-throb. Good-looks. Tattoos. Piercings. And a total heart-breaker This pretty much sums up Kaleb as a character, but like other readers of Hourglass we all know that he is more than what he appears to be. For the most part Kaleb was a bit of a jerk, even if he had good reasoning's for being more inclined that way. But as you slowly begin to overlook his certain 'quirks' in personality, I had actually found Kaleb's character to be somehow more . . . softer and more . . . well . . . vulnerable than what I've previously seen from him which I loved reading about. And then of course there's Lily, Emerson's best friend, who is the love interest for Kaleb and is simply there to help out the gang in catching a bad guy. As much as I wanted to love Lily, I can't say she was a favourite of mine. Sadly. I think it was because of her relationship with Kaleb or rather it was because I found her to be a rather blunt character . . . maybe it's just me feeling this but yeah she was blunt and not particularly likable. Although what I did love about Lily was how she made Kaleb get a run for his money to get her interested . . . so I say good for Lily for making our boy work harder than ever before for a girl to date which was a nice shake up to the storyline.
Now when it comes to the story itself, I thought everything was pretty fast-paced and was enjoyable enough to keep me reading til the very end, but quite often I found myself confused by all the sci-fi-ness of the storyline and all the quirks in naming these time slips and other whatnot. Maybe it was because I haven't read Hourglass in a really, really long time which may have contributed to me not really 'getting the book' as I hoped I would or maybe it was because I couldn't remember certain parts of the series and who was who, but yeah . . . I was a little bit confused. But moving past this and as I read through the last half of the book, I have to say it was actually quite awesome to finally have some questions answered from the previous book and getting the clearer picture of things (especially in what the villain wants mostly), so that was probably one of the highlights for me and this book.
Overall, I highly recommend this book especially to those who've already read the first book, Hourglass. While TIMEPIECE wasn't exactly my favourite of the series so far, but the cliffhanger did offer up quite an interesting turn-point, so I'll definitely be looking forward to the third book and wondering who will be narrating it next! I sincerely hope it's a character I love this time round . . . maybe Michael?
The Rating
3/5 stars
5/5 stars