#TheWriteReads #UltimateBlogTour Book Review: Crossing in Time – D.L. Orton

Hello, friends!

Another amazing blogtour by the amazing Dave @TheWriteReads – thank you so much for having me on this tour! Big thanks also to the lovely author D.L. Orton, who was so sweet to not only provide us readers with an ecopy, but also an audiobook of her work! I listened to it for about the first half and then switched over to the ebook. (Not because I didn’t like it, I just sometimes get impatient and want to read myself 😂)

So first things first: The first impression! This cover is GORGEOUS!! I fell in love with it at  first sight, and I just knew I HAD to read this book! It’s so mysterious and yet pretty and the colours – GAAH! It’s everything a cover should be! And then the blurb… I mean hello? TIME TRAVEL really sold me, but I loved the sound of everything!! I knew I was in for a great ride, and I wasn’t disappointed! Read on to find out more!

The Blurb

The past isn’t over, it’s an opening. The future isn’t hidden, it’s a trap.
If she ever wants to see him again, she’ll have to take the risk.

Fall into this “Funny, Romantic & Harrowing” (Publishers Weekly Starred Review) dystopian love story and prepare to encounter a finicky time machine, a mysterious seashell, and a very clever dog (some sex, some swearing, some violence, but no vampires and absolutely NO ditzes!)

When offered a one-way trip to the past, Isabel sacrifices everything for a chance to change the rapidly deteriorating present–and see her murdered lover one last time. When she arrives twenty years in the past, buck naked and mortally wounded, she has 24 hours to convince a stunned but enraptured nineteen-year-old to change their future. Definitely easier said than done, as success means losing him to a brainy, smart-mouthed bombshell (her younger self), and that’s a heart breaker, save the world or not.

This offbeat tale is about falling madly in love when one is too cynical for such things, letting go of pessimism when it’s the last life jacket on a sinking ship, and racing against the clock when one doesn’t have the proper footwear. It’s a coming-of-age story for old fogeys, a how-to-make-love guide for diehard celibates, and a laugh-out-loud tragedy with a hopeful twist.

(From Goodreads)

My Review

This sci-fi was such a quick and easy read, I definitely recommend it to everyone who loves sci-fi and dystopian novels, but also suspense, time-travel and romance! The story starts off with the main characters Isabel and Diego, the former couple meeting again after years of being apart. Even in just this first encounter you can feel it sizzling between these two – a point I thorougly enjoyed throughout the novel.

To be honest, I was expecting the time-travel aspect to happen earlier on in the story, but the fact that it did actually happen later in time did not disappoint me. Instead, the story revolves more around the second-chance romance between Isabel and Diego. Isabel’s ex-husband Dave makes quite a few appearances too, and every time he was there I wanted to climb inside the book and strangle him. Every. Time!!! Poor Isabel. All the nicer it was to see her and Diego together. Their passion for each other was mirrored in all their movements and dialogue and it was woven like a red thread through the book.

Although, how tragic is that? Just as they have met again after years and years apart, the world around Isabel and Diego is beginning to fall apart, and even though they both plan for the worst case scneario, tragedy after tragedy strikes, and we get a glimpse at how fragile society actually is. (If the past months didn’t show you, you will learn this here.) In order to outrun catastrophies that could lead to the extinction of the human race, the two have to stay together as a couple. But not only that. There’s also scary virus. Not to spoiler or anything, but in case that theme is too much for you at the moment (as we’re pretty much in exactly that situation), this book may not be for you. However, I do have to say that I’d still classify this mostly in the romance genre.

I have to get back to Isabel and Diego for a second. They are such amazing characters, I fell in love with them right away. Isabel is so strong-willed and determined, not like your usual romance-heroine, and definitely no damsel in distress. However, she isn’t like a rock either. Isabel has both sides – the emotional as well as the head-strong one, and I absolutely loved that. Diego is deeply caring for Isabel. He is our nerdy hero, and you won’t be able to help falling in love with him (alongside with Isabel). I loved the puns, the innuendo, the hot, sizzling moments between the two. That’s not all though. Both of them are going and have been going through so much, I was rooting for them all the way through!

I don’t want to give too much away, but what I can say is that this book is highly addictive. I can recommend both the ebook as well as the audiobook version. The narrators in the audiobook were great. Very authentic, very into the story, and great picks for the characters in my opinion. Also, I love books with short chapters; I’m not sure if it actually works like that but it feels like I finish a book much more quickly when it has short chapters, and I feel way more like reading another (and another, and another) when the chapters are short like in this one, so that was another big plus for me.

Now, I hope this won’t be too spoilery, but I did think about how changing things in another “world,” so to speak would prevent catastrophies in “our” world from happening, but the book was so absorbing that this question didn’t linger. On the contrary, actually. I want to know what happens next! I want to read the second one!!!!
4 stars from me for this beautiful, thrilling and captivating second-chance time travel romance!

DL ORTON, THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR of the BETWEEN TWO EVILS series, lives
in the foothills of the Rockies where she and her husband are raising three boys, a golden retriever, two Siberian cats, and an extremely long-lived Triops. In her spare time, she’s building a time machine so that someone can go back and do the laundry.
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