The Hourglass Door

The Hourglass Door by Lisa Mangum is above average romance/adventure fare. Abby Edmunds is a totally normal high school senior with a normal life: she spends time with her boyfriend, applies for colleges along with her best friends, and assistant directs the school's production of Much Ado About Nothing. But at play practice one day she meets the new Italian exchange student, Dante Alexander. As is expected in books like this, she is immediately attracted to him. However, what kept me reading was that Dante was not a brooding, mysterious bad boy, or, rather, there was more to him than that. He and Abby develop a friendship and chemistry between the two of them that is fairly legitimately built up as lacking in Abby's relationship with Jason, her neighbor/childhood friend/boyfriend. Also to the book's credit is that Jason isn't depicted as some dumb lug; he's a truly nice, thoughtful guy who cares about Abby and she about him, even if there's no spark of romance there. The historical/time travel elements of the plot are handled well enough, although we don't get much resolution because, of course, this is a series and not a stand-alone novel. I'll keep an eye out for the second book, and I hope that we get to visit sixteenth-century Italy, because we know that Renaissance Italy is a favorite setting of mine, just as I love to see theatre and drama in books. Well, overall, The Hourglass Door was a decent read, even if it's not anything to rave about.