Time Between Us by Tamara Ireland Stone

Read: September 2015

Format: Audiobook

My Book Rating: 3/5 Stars

My Narrator Rating: 3/5 Stars

Genre: Time Travel Romance – Young Adult

First things first, can we talk about how beautiful this cover is? So soft and romantic, the blues and pink. Him, so close to her yet so far away. And the longing on her face. Love the cover. Love, love love.

The book itself….

Time Between Us – or as I call it, “Twilight, but with time travel” – is the story of Anna and Bennett.

Anna is a high school girl who falls for the new guy in school, Bennett. The day he started school, she was sure she saw him that morning watching her run on the track of the local college. She was sure he knew her, somehow, from the way he watched her so intently. Yet, when they meet each other at school, he denies being at the track and seems legitimately confused. However, upon learning her name is Anna, something sparks within him.

You see, Bennett has the power of time travel. He has limitations to his time travel that we learn in the book, and his own set of self-imposed rules. Additionally, Bennett meets Anna in the prologue – before the events of the book take place. He meets Anna in HIS present time, before they meet her in HER present time. (That’s confusing…)

Anyway, as I stated above, I lovingly call this book “Twilight, but with time travel” because it follows many of the same themes. New at school (Bella/Bennett), falls for the boy/girl (Edward/Anna) even though “we can’t be together” (because he’s a vampire/time traveler). There’s the moment of the big reveal where he saves her life and she discovers he’s a (vampire) time traveler and it’s revealed over dinner at a restaurant. Oh yeah, Bennett is also filthy rich. Just. Like. Edward. Cullen.

I did enjoy this book, but it was very difficult to look past all of the Twilight parallels. I liked the romance between Anna and Bennett, the build was done pretty well and I believed they really cared for each other. They were both pretty well developed.

Aside from the Twilight parallels which had me rolling my eyes (and I would like to point out that I do enjoy Twilight) the only other problem I had was the flimsy reasoning behind why Bennett has the power of time travel. SPOILER ALERT – there is no reason. One day he just thought, “I wonder if I can time travel”, tried, and it was a success. I didn’t buy that for one second. It felt like a cheap cop out by the author. Like, she really wanted to do a time travel book, but she didn’t want to think past the romance.

I did like that upon losing Bennett Anna actually did learn to move on with her life, unlike Bella who was catatonic for months. Sure Anna was sad, but she could function as a normal human being.

In all, I’d say this is a pretty average read. If you’re a huge Twilight fan you’ll probably love this book, unless the similarities drive you batty as they did for me.