Review: Hourglass

Hourglass –Myra McEntire

“One hour to rewrite the past . . .

For seventeen-year-old Emerson Cole, life is about seeing what isn’t there: swooning Southern Belles; soldiers long forgotten; a haunting jazz trio that vanishes in an instant. Plagued by phantoms since her parents’ death, she just wants the apparitions to stop so she can be normal. She’s tried everything, but the visions keep coming back.
So when her well-meaning brother brings in a consultant from a secretive organization called the Hourglass, Emerson’s willing to try one last cure. But meeting Michael Weaver may not only change her future, it may change her past.
Who is this dark, mysterious, sympathetic guy, barely older than Emerson herself, who seems to believe every crazy word she says? Why does an electric charge seem to run through the room whenever he’s around? And why is he so insistent that he needs her help to prevent a death that never should have happened?

Full of atmosphere, mystery, and romance, Hourglass merges the very best of the paranormal and science-fiction genres in a seductive, remarkable young adult debut.”-Taken from Goodreads

The Time Traveler’s Wife Meets X-Men Meets The Eternal Ones?

Ok, perhaps that is a little unfair. Just because this book has a lot of things to do with time travel does not mean it should be related to The Time Traveler’s Wife in anyway. It’s not like Audrey Niffenegger was the first person to write about time travel in the first place. And there are people that have special abilities that all live in the same area, hide identities, turn on one another etc.
Let’s start at the beginning. This is a story about a girl named Emerson who lives with her brother and sister-in-law but battles with dealing with the past and living with her ‘ability’. Enter Michael, who happens to work for the Hourglass, and has his own special ‘ability’.

I did not like the lead up of Emerson and Michael and they are the main couple in the book. Maybe I just felt squishy about the whole thing because when Emerson first sees Michael she describes him as appearing older and very cultured, but then we find out that he is only about two years older than her. He acts like he’s about 10. Also, I felt like Emerson had a lot of major issues with herself (granted that is a big part of the book because of what happened to her prior to living with Tom and Dru). Some examples of this that occur would be Emerson going through Michael’s room maybe a couple of days after she meets him, playing ‘crazy’ to her brother, and physically throwing Michael over her shoulder in the middle of town. I honestly laughed out loud at that one. The dialogue does not really move the book a long because it is mainly Emerson ordering Michael to tell her more and he always responds in the same way. This halts the story….There were obviously many things that were mentioned in this book that are there to set up the next in the series because they were not utilized in this book.

All of this being said, the book and some of the ideas behind it (time travel, making matter etc) are very smart. I don’t know if Myra has a background in science at all, but there was obviously a lot of research that went into that aspect. There are also many unexpected turns that occur within the last 100 pages. Perhaps some of them were a little predictable to an astute reader.

This is a book for me that fell a little flat. That could because I had wanted to read this for so long that the anticipation was building up so much, and I was expecting a lot of really great things. Don’t get me wrong, I did like this book. I do remember myself constantly glancing at my to-read piles and lists online and forcing myself to get through the book in order to get to another one. I have been trying to stay away from reading other reviews about this book so that they don’t sway my opinions. Most of the reviews have been very good for this book anyway. I have read some reviews where they see a lot of comparisons to Twilight (not a rip-off, but minor comparisons with events and descriptions), and I can honestly tell you that that did not happen one single time for me.