EMMIE AND THE TUDOR KING

Time travel enables a seemingly impossible romance.

Emmie’s mind is on creating a piece of jewelry that will get her into a prestigious London design school, not on her friends or the end of high school. When she spots an unusual blue ring at a yard sale, she buys it—not realizing that when she falls asleep wearing it, she will be transported 400 years into the past, to the time of Nicholas the Ironheart, the last Tudor monarch of England, adding alternate history to time travel in this soft sci-fi. To Emmie’s surprise, Nick isn’t just the bloodthirsty maniac of history books; he’s handsome and dotes on his sister, Kit. But Emmie knows it’s Kit’s murder that will set Nick on his notorious historical path. As she falls in love with Nick, Emmie tries to protect Kit and to figure out whether she can give up the freedoms of the 21st century for love in the 16th. Even before the constant crisscrossing trips across time and the lies to cover up her absences, Emmie is a wishy-washy, reactive character. The alternate history angle isn’t fleshed out sufficiently, and the time travel is overused. Worst of all, the romance is hard to stomach, especially with Nick’s jealous temper.

Any potential the story had is let down by the execution.