I felt pretty much exactly the same about this book as I did the first: It's pure romance disguised as literary fiction so people who "don't read romance" can continue to feel secure in their superiority, it's somewhat bloated in the details and word count, and the story and plot meander. But it's also reluctantly interesting and full of historical details.

I think those who love love loved the first one will feel the same for this installment. Those who found themselves impatient with the length, the sometimes quite slow pace, and the lack of true forward momentum of the first won't find anything different in this one. In fact, I'd suggest that, except for some romantic and interpersonal conflict, this book does little to move forward the overall larger plot introduced in the first book. Because this book takes place entirely in the historical period, with some interludes to peek at the present, the large conflict/plot is addressed only peripherally by their search for the book.

A few other niggles: The romantic conflict puzzled me, because the author writes these characters as in love, shows them being affectionate with one another, and then bam! Suddenly we discover things have been awkward and somewhat bad between them for a period of time and so they argue, there's on-page conflict, and then back to normal. Rinse, repeat. It's more like we're told the conflict was there, but we never saw it or were shown it.

The other thing that really worked at me was the time travel aspect, both how much they were changing the future, but also how they were changing Matthew's world, so when they came back to the future, the historical Matthew would be facing some differences in his life. The author gave a brief (2 lines, I think) mention of how this was going to be avoided, but time travel implications are always something I feel need a bit more attention and explanation, and I didn't feel that here.

Anyway, all that said, I really think fans of the first book will be fans of this book. The author's insertion of historic figures and detail seems quite precise & a bit fascination. I don't regret spending time reading it, but I'm a fast reader so my time commitment isn't the same as for many others. I can't recommend it at hardcover prices, but would give it hesitant recommendation at a mass market price. But I might try to convince someone to read some of my more favorite books first. Will I read the third? Probably, if only to get payoff for reading the first two, with the expectation that this is only a trilogy. If it turned out to be more than a trilogy, I think I'd be done.