Travelers by Meradeth Houston

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Travelers by Meradeth Houston

Travelers

by: Meradeth Houston
My Rating: five-stars



Published by: Bookfish Books LLC on August 2nd 2015
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction

Pages: 162
Also by this author: Colors Like Memories, The Chemistry of Fate
Disclosure: I was invited by the author to read this title in exchange for my honest and unbiased review. I received no monetary compensation, and all comments are subjective and mine alone.



Synopsis

Sienna Crenshaw knows the rules: 1) no time traveling beyond your natural lifetime, 2) no screwing with death, and 3) no changing the past. Ever. Sienna doesn’t love being stuck in the present, but she’s not the type to to break the rules. That is, she wasn’t the type until her best friend broke every one of those rules to keep Henry, her twin brother and Sienna’s ex-boyfriend, alive.

Suddenly, Sienna is caught in an unfamiliar reality. The upside? Henry is still alive. The downside? Sienna’s old life, including the people in it, has been erased. Now, Sienna and Henry must untangle the giant knot in time, or her parents and all the rest of the Travelers, will be lost forever. One problem: the only way to be successful is for Henry to die.






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This is a hard review to write. Although I finished Travelers some time ago, I haven’t been able to write my review. There are a few reasons for this, mainly, however, I think it is because I’m struggling with how to classify the story. It’s a young adult romance…

You’re still the Sienna I love. You could have come from the other side of the planet, or spoken any other language, and I’d still love you. Because it’ll always be you. The core of who you are is the same, and that’s what I love. ~Henry

Sienna and Henry are so in love throughout the story. Their love takes many differing paths, however. Which brings me to my second thought… it centers on time travel.

So many “ifs” and never enough time.

Well, yes and no. Like I mentioned, it’s a romance. But is it mostly romance? Or is it mostly time travel? Well, I’m not sure. I don’t think it can be one or the other. It’s both sides of the coin—romance and time travel, combined. Without one element, there wouldn’t be a need for the other. So I have to classify it as both. But, there’s also the action/adventure, betrayal, mystery…

More than anything, I wanted to leave with Henry and forget about everything else, but I couldn’t. I had to set things right. He had to die. ~Sienna

There are so many components to Travelers, it makes writing a comprehensive review difficult. But there is one part of my review that remains the same regardless of how I classify the book… I liked it! No, I really liked it. Which is no real surprise. It was written by one of my favorite authors. I read the book in two sittings. It would have been one, but I was running low on caffeine and couldn’t keep my eyes open. Of course, the fact it was after 3 am might have something to do with that. Travelers

 

Travelers has one of the most unique plots I’ve read in a long while. Since it is a time travel, there were so many story arcs, running over different time frames, intersecting, involving various characters at different times in their life… over different realities. In one scene a character might be alive and well. In the next scene, that very same character’s life, situation, reality—whatever—could be entirely different. Meradeth Houston showed a deft hand in how she wrote across time, taking in the many shifting realities, and keeping the story from becoming a tangled, muddled mess.

I enjoyed all the jaunts through time the protagonist, Sienna, had to make on her quest to right the wrongs created in history. Meradeth managed to have her characters cycling through time over and over, without her writing becoming redundant, or too confusing, which speaks to her gift of storytelling.

 

But the travels weren’t the only thing that needed finessing. Meradeth had to create characters that were strong enough to stand against the changes in time, place, and reality. Weak character building would have ruined a story like Travelers. And while some authors write weak characters, hiding them under clichés and gratuitous sex (not that I don’t like that!), that type of sloppy character building would have been magnified in a story like Travelers.

 

I loved Sienna. She had a special mix of independence and strength that made me root for her. And when I thought someone was jerking her around? I squeezed my Kindle a little too hard and mumbled obscenities at them. And my heart hurt for her. Because she loved Henry. She really did. And she had to live through losing him once, but through circumstances created by Henry’s sister, Sienna had to relive that pain over, and over, and over. And although she was a strong girl, the reader also sees her pain and anger. Her confusion over why things have to be that way.

 

No thoughts entered my mind. Everything seemed blank, washed out, unreal. My heart beat, but even that small sound was lost to me. ~Sienna

 

Henry is just… Henry. I can’t say much about him without giving too much away, but he’s great. He loved Sienna as much as she loved him. And when faced with his own mortality, he still stood up for what he knew to be right.

 

Joan is the antagonist in the book. She’s Henry’s sister and Sienna’s best friend. She breaks “Travelers Law” and changes the past, creating a world to her liking. But, oddly, I couldn’t hate her. She had reasons for what she did. Real reasons—it made my heart go soft. Not for the atrocities she caused—and she was naughty, to put it mildly—but what happen to cause her to lose her grip on reality

 

Joan’s motives will cause you to question what you would do… what price you would pay… for family.

 

In the end, I couldn’t help but wonder if Joan was the true villain, or if death, or even time itself, was the true dark force.

 

Bottom line: Travelers is a rich, unique story. The amount of thought and planning the author put into her work is evident. One cannot sit and just write a book with so many intersecting characters, situations, timeframes, dynamics. It’s a true statement to the author’s talent that so many variables were pulled together seamlessly. Sounds awesome, right? Yeah… cuz it is!

 

Sounds awesome, right? Yeah… cuz it is! Meradeth has a way of making sentences sing. I fell in love with her writing when I read her first novel, Colors Like Memories. Since then I’ve read several of her books, and I’m never disappointed–and Travelers was no different.

 

My opinion? Read it. Now. You’ll have fun, be amazed at the storytelling ability of Meradeth Houston (if you don’t know her already), cuss some, cry some, and get butterflies… then you’ll start chapter two and it’ll all start again.

About Meradeth Houston

Meradeth Houston lives in Montana where she’s an anthropology professor and scientist. If you let her, she’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know about getting DNA out of dead stuff. She enjoys escaping the snow by imagining herself back in her favorite places in her home state of California, with a little drama or supernatural flare added in. She’s a proud dog mom and represented by Cristi Marchetti.

Michelle
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      1. Meradeth

        Okay, you totally posted this while I was writing a long and rambly email to you, lol! 🙂 Thank you sooo much for reading and reviewing and for being just all around awesome!!

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