A Stitch in Time: 11/16/21

A Stitch in Time by Kelley Armstrong is the start of a time travel romance series. Bronwyn Dale has inherited an English estate she last visited as a teen. As a child she was friends with a Victorian era boy named William Thorne. Now that she's back, she's shocked to find that she can still visit him in his time and that he has also aged into a handsome man.

As an adult and now the owner of this estate, Bronwyn has to contend with the rumors that the house is haunted and that her Victorian boyfriend was a serial murderer. By village lore he's accused of killing his fiancée, his sister, and a childhood friend.

Bronwyn's investigations done in both the present (through ghosts and research) and in the past (traveling there and doing more conventional amateur sleuthing, have a story structure similar to the Truly Devious series by Maureen Johnson. The difference, here though, is that Bronwyn is the narrator protagonist for both halves of the mystery which makes the narrative flow more smoothly.

Bronwyn's sleuthing / romance with William puts this book on the road narrative spectrum. Bronwyn as the present day owner of the estate is a privileged traveler (00). Her destination is uhoria (CC) in that she can both travel back in time to visit William and she can interact with ghosts. Her route there is the railroad (00), albeit a metaphoric one. Early on in the novel she comments about how quickly her life has gone by as a speeding train and she's hoping now to take more time for self care.

The next volume in the series is a novella called Ballgowns & Butterflies (2020).

Five stars

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