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Timeless    by Alexandra Monir Amazon.com order for
Timeless
by Alexandra Monir
Order:  USA  Can
Delacorte, 2012 (2011)
Hardcover, Softcover, e-Book

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* *   Reviewed by Lyn Seippel

Sixteen-year-old Marion Windsor was the daughter of a wealthy New York family. While attending a photography class at the Museum of Art, she met and fell in love with nineteen-year-old Henry Morris from the Bronx. Her parents were appalled, but thought the couples' relationship would burn out on its own. Soon after graduation, Marion and Henry ran away to Los Angeles, planning to marry in Las Vegas when they had the money for the trip.

One night Henry didn't return home from work. Marion found out that her parents had offered him one million dollars to leave her. She was broken hearted by their offer and his apparent acceptance. Furious she cut herself off from her parents completely.

What neither Henry nor her family knew is that Marion was pregnant. This story begins when Marion dies in a car crash. Her daughter Michele moves to New York to live with grandparents she's never met.

Lonely and depressed as she is, Michele's future relationship with her grandparents doesn't look promising. They are cold and have their own lives that don't involve her. She rarely even eats meals with them.

Michele's room belonged to her mother at one time and before her mother it belonged to a long line of Windsor heiresses. Her room becomes her sanctuary from a world she doesn't want to live in. One day she discovers a diary belonging to her great-great aunt. When she touches it she flashes backwards in time to Manhattan's Gilded Age. There she meets Phillip Walker. She recognizes him as having visited her dreams all of her life. She always felt he was a real. When she visits him in the past, he can see her but no one else can. Michele's dual life of past and present begins. She finds it harder and harder to return to the present without Phillip.

This novel ends with 'To Be Continued'. I don't like cliffhanger endings for a novel. Novels should have an ending even if there are sequels to come. You've bought the book so having to buy the next one to see what happens seems unfair. I did enjoy the author's notes after the book's ending. Explanations of different New York locations and even time travel theories are a big plus for readers.

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