TIMEKEEPER by Tara Sim

 

I finished TIMEKEEPER in a frenzy, brushing past words and jumping quickly to new paragraphs to see what would happen next. 

I guess you would expect a book about time to be well-paced. Some books shuffle a bit at the beginning—or worse, grab you for the first ten or twenty pages, the let you drift aimlessly for the next hundred or so. This one didn't. We're tossed right into Danny Hart's world, and we meet his love interest, Colton, pretty quickly, too. There's a cute little twist right at the beginning, and I'm embarrassed to admit I fell for it. Me and Danny, we're a coupla dopes, I guess.

The romance is soft and sweet, and skips along like the fairytales Danny brings for Colton to read. The first kiss was, in a word, precious. Our young heroes do seem to go from "I like you" to "I'd die for you" in a matter of weeks—or months? okay probably months, but it might be that the fast pace sometimes pushed the romance a little to the side so the mystery could shine.

And boy did it. As we got closer and closer to the end, time seemed to speed up accordingly. The revelation of the person (persons?) responsible for it all surprised me as much as it did Danny. It could be, however, that, like the romance, there simply wasn't as much time spent on friendships and professional relationships for us to truly feel the sting—but that's likely the difference between a YA and an adult novel.

That said, I think this could have been an equally good adult book, and, me being an adult 🤣 I probably would have appreciated it a bit more. But I have little doubt young readers will find Danny's relationships with his mother, friends, and boyfriend very relatable. You do tend to burn fast and hot at his age.

This is my first gaslamp fantasy!! and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. (There may be hints of steampunk here, as there are automated workers here and there, but I think this is definitely a precursor novel to gaslamp fantasy.) More fantasy books should take place in this sort of fictional 1800s (and not just England). I'd also love to see more secondary fantasy worlds that are more gaslamp-adjacent. 

Special shoutout to my favorite character, Daphne: I actually would love a story from her POV!