2013 book 135

Bee Ridgway's The River of No Return
I'm not sure why, but I really love a good time travel story, and this book turned out to be an excellent time travel story. Our protagonists are Julia, whose grandfather has just died in 1815 and now her terrible cousin is inheriting the estate, determined to ferret out her grandfather's secrets! And Nick, who is about to die in the War of 1812 when he is suddenly whisked away to the 2000s and trained to blend into the future by a secret group of time travelers . . . . who also have secrets! We find out pretty early on that these two are actually neighbors in the 1800s, so waiting for their paths to cross is a bit frustrating, but after that things get pretty action-packed. And things end with a lot of threads left dangling, so I have to assume there's a sequel. Which is great, because I'd love to see more of these characters, and Ridgway injects a lot of humor into the proceedings (there's some particularly funny business with a Rubik's cube, and I liked Nick's nascent feminism). Really a lot of fun, this reminds me of the Ruby Red books by Kerstin Gier, but they aren't YA and the romance is a lot more palatable, at least to me (and I like those books a lot, so). Highly recommended. A/A-.