I was hooked from the first chapter of Marking Time. Despite a seventeen-year-old heroine, this book isn’t just for YA readers. Saira Elian is smart and capable, with enough sarcasm in her voice to keep her real. She’s been self-sufficient so long she’s never learned to ask for help – until her whole world turns upside down with her mother’s disappearance, and she discovers she’s from a long line of time travelers. I loved her journey from over-confidence, through the total breakdown of everything she thought she knew. And the thing she’s finally able to accept is that she doesn’t have to take that journey alone.
Her introduction to Archer in Victorian London is fantastic, and the evolution of their friendship has just the right amount of “two-steps-forward, one-step-back” to keep me totally invested in them. I love Saira’s friends at the school for Immortal Descendants, and I want nothing more than to go free-running through London with Ringo.
April White has written a fresh take on the idea that Time, Nature, Fate, War and Death are immortals, and their Descendants have hereditary traits that make them special among ordinary humans. And the greater story of politics and prejudices among the various Families is a believable framework for Saira’s journey to find her mother and discover herself in the process.
Marking Time has just the right amount of fantasy, magic, adventure, romance and thrills that it’s on my “must recommend” book to young adult and adult readers alike.

Helga