The Time Tutor

River of No Return #0.5

by Bee Ridgway

When Alva receives an invitation from a man offering his services as a Time Tutor, she doesn’t know what to think: Is he a time traveler or a charlatan? And does it really matter, when he is so devilishly attractive? The Time Tutor is a fast-paced romantic prequel to Bee Ridgway’s acclaimed novel, The River of No Return.

Genres: Time Travel, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Romance, Fiction, Science Fiction, Adult

90 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 25, 2014

About the author

I was raised in Massachusetts, then drifted around from here to there until I finally came to rest in Philadelphia. I teach American literature at Bryn Mawr College, and for fun I read, write, read, cook, read, walk all over my beautiful and dirty city, read . . . THE RIVER OF NO RETURN is my first novel, and the experience of writing it was so overwhelmingly fun that I'm roaring ahead on the sequel.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Time Tutor is a novella-length prequel to Bee Ridgway's debut, The River of No Return, which came out last year. The story follows two characters who become involved with the Guild, the shadowy organisation at the heart of the time travel intrigue forming the backdrop for both books. Because it's been a while since I read River I was worried I'd have forgotten what it was all about, but The Time Tutor is fast-paced, immediately interesting and works well as a standalone story. Despite it being short, I was captivated by the characters and was delighted when the romantic development I was rooting for actually happened! Exciting, entertaining and sexy, this tale reminded me how much I enjoyed the world of River, and made me keen to read even more as soon as possible. Basically, it did its job absolutely perfectly.

[Anika Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bee Ridgway's The River of No Return was one of my favourite reads of last year - a story of time travel and romance set both in Regency times and modern London. To celebrate the paperback release, Penguin have published this special prequel novella to the series - The Time Tutor.

The Time Tutor follows the events that unfold as Hannelore, the leader and matriarch of the Guild, decides to test two of her Favourites - Alva and Bertrand. It's been quite a while since I read The River of No Return so I didn't remember a lot about these characters, but it started to come back as the members of the Guild and the Ofan start to interact. Who is the Ofan spy infiltrating the Guild and who, if anyone, is to be trusted?

You don't need to have read The River of No Return before reading this prequel. Although the workings of time travel get quite complicated, the basics are explained here as well as the difference between the Guild and Ofan factions.

The story itself is short but driven, with some rather sexy moments thrown in for good measure. The Time Tutor made me want to re-read the first book and whetted my appetite for the second, whenever that will be!

This review was originally posted on Tea in the Treetops in February 2014.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ahhhhhh man. What kills me is the world-building in this world (and that of The River of No Return is SO damn interesting (why it's 3 stars instead of 2), and the characterization just drives me batty. Again, this has a really interesting idea around time travel, fascinating organizations in the Guild (and Ofan), and what could be a neat plot, but my god, it's just flat. People falling in love at first sight, cardboard characterizations, feisty women that keep men up at night just THINKING about how witty and firey they are -- lord have mercy. I want more. I want more in this world, but I want MORE from this world.

[T · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot believe I got my greedy little hands on an advanced copy of this (thank you so much, Penguin and Netgalley!).

I was a little bit wary at first, if only because Alva was easily my least favourite character in the original book. This changed that. It was absolutely great getting to see things from her perspective, and learning a little bit more about where she came from-- and, more importantly, the depth of the relationships that played out in the history of the original novel, but that we never got to see. Alva, Bertrand and Dar were all fantastic; I loved getting a real feel of who they were. After all, we got so little of them in River of No Return. Bertrand was the only one I had felt anything about in the original story, but we didn't really know all that much about who he actually was. And now he makes so much more sense, I find.

I'm disappointed it was as short as it was, but oh my god was it worth it! I'm even more excited for the sequel now (was that possible?), and I'm even more attached to some of these characters.

Thank you, Ridgway, for making me like the characters I hadn't been sure about before! I can't wait for more.

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Time Tutor was advertised as a "fast-paced" prequel to The River of No Return but it ended up being very messy and not enough to satisfy any craving for this wonderful world. One of the main appeals of The River was the immersive world-building, the strong characterizations and the slow reveal of possibilities and mysteries - Time Tutor is the polar opposite in style and content and it simply does not work for me. The prequel cannot be read as a stand-alone, readers are thrown directly into the action, including a heavy dose of Guild terminology and intrigue. This was a disappointment in more ways than one, as this is probably the only other book we will get in this series - as far as other comments on social media go, the sequel to River has probably been cancelled.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this little prequel novella because a) I'd just read The River of No Return and I was disappointed that the sequel wasn't out yet and I wanted to find out more about this universe, and b) I wanted something I could finish in a single plane ride. Mission accomplished.

While I wouldn't say it was an unnecessary prequel, most of the information it contained could have easily been revealed in The River of No Return through dialogue between Alva and Nick. (Spoilers ahead. You've been warned.)

The most important bits of information were that a) Hannelore was a sadistic fuck who needed to be stopped, b) Alva chose the life of the demimonde as a way to place herself in a position of power so she could help the Ofan, NOT because she was a frivolous harlot with no true ambition, and c) Bertrand has been a double agent for basically his whole life. All of that could've been covered in the novel.

The piece that couldn't have been covered was the character of Ignatz Vogelstein. And this is the true value and enjoyment of this story. For it's easy to see now why Alva fell in love with the grumpy old rake, and why he fell in love with her. They're one of those couples who are just so gratifying for how in sync they are. Even if the sexy times described in the book were... not particularly compelling. And even if his """reasons""" for """rescuing her""" from the Guild house were... laughably unclear and contrived.

It was a decent way to bide the time, but nowhere near as compelling, well-written, or suspenseful as The River of No Return. And I worry that if the author is spending her time putting out little prequels like this, she's not working particularly quickly on the next full-length novel...

Perhaps I need to go reread Neil Gaiman's provocative essay, "George R.R. Martin Is Not Your Bitch."

[Bibliophilic Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual Rating: 2.5 / 5

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most wonderful books I read last year was The River of No Return, by Bee Ridgway (who happens to be one of the most wonderful people I've ever "met", though the universe continues to deny us a chance to share physical space). It is a madcap mashup of everything good that there is in this world, so of course I jumped at the chance to read the prequel novella, The Time Tutor.

If you loved RoNR (and how could you not?), then I promise you that you'll love this. Our focus swings from Nick and Julia to the firecracker Alva Blomgren, the Ofan courtesan that sparkles in every scene of The River of No Return. We see her as a member of the Guild, an organization considerably more sinister than the one we remember (and also one that predates the one we read about), and we see her using her seductive powers to manipulate people. I'd forgotten what a fun character Alva is, so it was nice to spend a whole novella with her.

Once again, Ridgway shines as she smashes together a bunch of things--there are undertones of a conspiracy thriller, fun time travel mishaps, evocative writing (I especially love the scene in which Alva feels all the emotions of one place over centuries and centuries of time before she time travels) and skin-tingling romantic prose. The tone manages to shift repeatedly but remain pitch-perfect throughout. It's a delight.

5/5

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I saw that NetGalley was offering The Time Tutor by Bee Ridgway, I leapt at the chance to read it. I adored her debut novel, The River of No Return. I wanted to learn more about the world she created, in which some people are born with the ability to travel up and down the River of Time. You will need to have read The River of No Return to fully understand this story. Ridgway doesn’t waste word count on explaining how the time traveling ability works or who the Guild or the Ofan are. This is an incredibly fast read, so there’s almost no time to pick things up from context, either...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration.

[Kenci · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. This prequel was a mess of cliches, cardboard characters, and terrible dialogue. I'm not sure if I'll give the novel a try or not. Very disappointing.

[Janine Ballard · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.3 stars

This prequel novella to Ridgway’s The River of No Return works best as a time travel fantasy. If you’re interested in it as a romance, I recommend you read it after The River of No Return, since one of the two lovers in this novella dies in that novel. I was able to enjoy reading it out of chronological order (fitting since the series is about people who time travel and live out of chronology), even knowing that Ignatz would outlive Alva, perhaps because I knew that going in to their novella.

Ignatz is one of the Ofan, a group of rebels who defy Hannelore, leader of the time traveling organization known as the Guild. Hannelore won’t teach her disciples, who once traveled to their new time on instinct, how to repeat this feat. Bertrand, one of those disciples, is Ignatz’s spy in the Guild, but he is newly in love with Alva, another disciple of Hannelore’s, and therefore Ignatz is in jeopardy of losing Bertrand as an operative. Ignatz sets out to win back Bertrand’s loyalty, but underestimates Alva and her appeal to him. If Ignatz teaches Alva to time jump, and they give in to their attraction, what will Bertrand and Hannelore do?

This is the second of Ridgway’s books that I’ve read and I think her books work better for me as fantasy than as romances. As with The River of No Return, the development of Ignatz and Alva’s romantic feelings feel rushed. I also didn’t love that Ignatz was unprepared for Alva’s brilliance because Alva was a woman. But I did love Alva. She’s a great character, smart and vivacious, daring and strong — worthy of a full length novel. I also really like the way time travel works in these books, the metaphor (made literal to the time travelers) of time as a river of human emotion. The setting details are great, too.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

※Read this AFTER reading "The River of No Return".

I didn't have high expectations for the prequel, but OH WOW, that was amazing.
I didn't think I was going to love Alva and Julia's grandfather.
(But I'm confused. Alva is young enough to be Nick's lover, but Julia and Nick are around the same age...???)

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great story, a little unsatisfying because it was so short. I can't wait for this author to write more.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

10/10 but 0/10 because it was TOO SHORT lol
More rivers of time please

[Lauryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick prequel to “The River of No Return” that left more to be desired. Read in a couple hours, it was a fun addition to the series but with the author wrote a sequel instead!

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice, entertaining prequel to "The Time Tutor." Still waiting for the sequel, though...

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calling this a novela is a stretch, more of a long chapter. Backstory on a minor character in the larger book - entertaining.

[Lark of The Bookwyrm's Hoard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast-paced is right: The Time Tutor is either a very short novella or a long short story, and fans of The River of No Return will love it even as it leaves them hungry for more. Alva, the Ofan courtesan/teacher, really sparkles in this tale of her early life: she's intelligent, beautiful, strong-willed, and playfully bewitching. We also get to know Ignatz Vogelstein (aka Lord Dar, Julia's adoptive grandfather), as a younger man, and we get a better sense of Bertrand and what makes him tick. Most of all, we see how and why the Ofan evolved to become a real rival to the Guild.

Make no mistake: The Time Tutor, while technically a prequel to The River of No Return, will make more sense if you've already read the novel. I think it could be read as a standalone or indeed as a prequel before reading the novel, but the novella is much richer if you already understand something of the Guild, the Ofan, and the nature of time and time travel.

The River of No Return was one of my few 5-star books of 2013, and I've been eagerly awaiting a sequel. I'm hoping that the publication of The Time Tutor means the sequel will be coming soon. According to Ms. Ridgway's Goodreads author page, she's working on it: "the experience of writing [The River of No Return] was so overwhelmingly fun that I'm roaring ahead on the sequel." Huzzah! I can't tell you how excited that makes me - I can't wait!

Giveaway: Thanks to the publisher, I have a paperback copy of The Time Tutor to give away to one lucky reader! [Giveaway runs through Sunday Mar. 2; click link at the top of this review to go to the entry form.]

And if you haven't read The River of No Return yet, check out my review!


FTC disclosure: I received a review copy from the publisher through NetGalley. All opinions are entirely my own.

[Tabitha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read more reviews like this at http://lovelybooksblog.blogspot.com!

It’s been quite awhile since I read The River of No Return so I worried about being lost when I started reading this novella. However, I was quickly drawn into the story and it soon became obvious that I didn’t need to remember anything about The River of No Return to really enjoy this short story. Ridgeway has a fantastic writing style that instantly pulled me back into the world secrets and time travel.

It was interesting to watch the interactions between Guild members and Hannelore and as the story went on I started to remember more about the conflict between the Guild and the Ofan. I’d forgotten what a fascinating take Ridgway had on time travel and I loved the sparkling descriptions of different time periods and the wonderfully written moment when Alva can finally feel the river of time. I was especially fascinated the the experiments Hannelore was conducting and I wish Ridgway had spent a little more time on them… my fingers are crossed for the sequel!

The romance was fun and kept the story moving along. It wasn’t exactly a swoon worthy romance but I enjoyed it all the same; Dar and Alva have a chemistry that shines through the pages. Even though the romance moved extremely quickly, one thing I don’t typically enjoy, it worked well for this novella and the little love triangle kept everything interesting.

Fans of the The River of No Return will no doubt adore getting the chance to take a peek at two of the more secondary characters from the first novel. After getting another little taste of Ridgeways writing I’m excited to get my hands on the sequel!

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

After falling in love with The River of No Return, I was desperate for more of this world. While The Time Tutor does provide some intriguing additional context and history for the two time travel organizations, as well as a handful of minor characters, introduced in the novel, I found that it was ultimately not nearly as compelling. First of all, Alva, Bertrand and Ignatz, who were entertaining in their small roles in the novel, are less charming, in my opinion, than Nick and Julia as leads. Though the romantic relationships operate similarly in both books, with characters falling madly in love at first sight, I found that element to be far more believable in Nick and Julia's circumstances than the ones presented here. I think the characters also suffer from the writing being, well, quite bland, too heavily reliant on dialogue and devoid of the close attention to period and setting in the novel. I especially found it odd that Alva, who does not learn how to time travel until the end and, therefore, is mostly familiar with late 18th-century English society, spoke in a very modern way, considering how skillfully the early 19th-century dialogue in the novel was handled. I think these problems result from the novella coming across as hastily plotted and written overall. It's a fun, fluffy little diversion that enriches several of the concepts presented in The River of No Return, but I don't think it's particularly necessary. I hope that the reportedly forthcoming sequel will be a return to form.

[Stacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this on the plane ride home from my meeting at 26 Broadway and it was riveting enough to distract me from not one, but three crying children nearby, a crappy seat, and a 7am flight on no sleep.

This is a short, novella-length prequel to the equally engaging "River of No Return". We get to learn more about some characters, and the conflicts between the Guild and the Ofan--two very different groups of time travelers. We meet Alva, Bertrand and the surprisingly sexy Vogelstein as younger characters.

It didn't take me long to get back into the playful spirit of the story and the characters. And of course now I want to reread River of No Return to see the connections better.

But I think I'll wait for the sequel and read them all together!

[Amy Alvis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not read The River of No Return, but I still really enjoyed this novella. I've always enjoyed time travel books, but have only read stories from the romance genre.

We are introduced to Alva and Bertrand who are members of the Guild. We later learn that Bertrand is a double agent and really works for the Ofan and reports to Dar. The Guild and Ofan are "rival" group that have members that can time travel. They each have different ways of teaching the members how to travel through time.

I'm really intrigued to see where this story goes and will be getting The River of No Return soon.

Thanks go out to Penguin via NetGalley for a copy of the novella in exchange of an honest review.

[Jaimie · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those of us who came up short at the finale of The River of No Return, the journey back to the beginning of the story with the meeting of Alva and Dar is a great taste to keep us happy until the next novel comes out. Their story really could have been a whole novel though, as we aren't clear on how Dar and Bertrum know each other and how the latter managed to get into the Guild even after clearly being picked up by the Ophan. The pre-story isn't even as much of a cliffhanger as what happens after. Obviously Alva sets herself up as a courtesan and ends up running into our protagonists, but what happens in the meantime? So many plot-holes!

[Anmiryam · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a charming tidbit of a novella. It works both as a prequel that fills out the backstory of characters from Bee Ridgeway's treat of a novel, The River of No Return, and as a standalone introduction to Ridgeway's world of time travel.

If you haven't read The River of No Return, read this now. It will whet your appetite for when the paperback edition hits the shelves at the end of March.

If you have already experienced Ridgeway's energetic blend of time travel and historical romance, this will help to pass the time until she manages to complete the sequel.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bee Ridgway is the best. I loved The River of No Return-it was fresh, well-written, clever, and romantic in the best possible way, (not the quivering bosom and thrusting sword of lust type)-and the prequel, Time Tutor, is just as good. It reads just fine as a story on its own, it also works to nudge your memory a bit as to what went on in The River of No Return. The characters are fully rounded and interesting, the pacing is lively, I could have happily read another 500 pages! This is short and sweet,but it gives me hope that the sequel to River won't be too far off. Can't wait!

[Sedgewick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous! I love the wit and believability of the characters (and by believability I mean, they are more wonderful than real, but believably so, if that makes sense. I want to love, like and loathe characters because I believe in them, even when they verge on the fantastic, or maybe especially then, because they are the kind of people you want to know). My only complaint -- Time Tutor isn't long enough!

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous! I hadn't yet read Bee Ridgway's novel, The River of No a Return, l but you can be certain I will now that I've been introduced to her work. The Time Tutor was fantastic - multiple historical periods, time travel, romance, sex, and Alva is one tough female protagonist. I started sending out recommendations to my book loving friends before I was even a quarter through this short work. More please, Bee Ridgway, and many thanks to Net Galley for the ARE.

[Madeleine · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book reminded me of Stardust by Neil Gaiman, except although it had an interesting storyline, the way the words were welded to the plot was kind of awkward and not-carrying. I wanted to like it, and I kept acting like it was the amazing Neil Gaiman book, but it just dragged and didn't seem to have any sort of cohesiveness to the plot. So, "It was okay". It's not that I "liked it", it was just "okay". And I'll leave it at that. I probably will not be reading the second book in the series.

[Jody · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, too-short prequel

I read this little novella in a few short hours. It was wonderful to get to know Alva better, as well as Lord Dar and Bertrand, characters who were fascinating in the first book, although they didn't get as much page-time as one would've liked. I wish this novella would have been developed into a full-fledged prequel. I would have liked to have seen Alva as she learned more of her talent and established herself in London the way she planned.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

In spite of the fact I didn't realize who this prequel was about until nearly the end, (I was confused on names), I enjoyed reading this. It filled in some areas in The River of No Return where I had questions, and it left me anxious to read the next book in the series. A good way to whet readers' appetites for more!