A CIRCLE OF TIME

A tiresomely perfect heroine travels back in time in a melodramatic fantasy. When a car accident leaves 14-year-old Allison Blair in a coma, her spirit is sent back to 1906, to occupy the body of poor, downtrodden Becky Lee Thompson. While Becky stays in 1996, keeping Allison’s body alive, Allison must somehow prevent a tragic death—but whose? Her abusive stepmother’s? Joshua, Becky’s boyfriend, with whom Allison is falling in love? The insane daughter of the neighboring wealthy Spanish family? Or Becky’s own? And can she save them before her own body, in the future, dies during brain surgery? This might have been an entertaining thriller if Montes (Egg-napped!, 2001, etc.) hadn’t stretched credulity until it snapped. Allison is brave, resourceful, clever, and (in Becky’s body) beautiful; everybody loves her, as she inspires Joshua to feminism, heals the ailing matriarch with modern medical notions, softens the crusty patriarch, awes the local psychic herbalist, patches up a star-crossed romance, reveals a lost heir, and predicts the San Francisco earthquake. Aside from the latter geological deus ex machina, there is nothing in the setting to indicate turn-of-the-century California. The aristocratic Cardona Pomales family may sprinkle their speech with Spanish, but with their golden tresses and soap opera intrigues might as well be transplanted fairy-tale royalty, while spooky Magda plays the part of the witch in the woods and Joshua is the stereotypical shepherd-prince. For young teens looking for a good romantic cry. (Fiction. 10-14)