Author: Lisa T. Bergren
Labels: Fiction | YA | General
Publisher: David C. Cook
Publication Date: September 1, 2011
Contains: Romance...slight implications...
Buy It: Amazon | Book Depository | The Publisher
My Rating: ★★★★
(I liked it a lot)--------------------------------------------------------------------
Blurb: When Gabi and Lia finally learn to surf the river of time, they realize they must make hard choices about life and love in the third and final book in the River of Time series.
Gabi and Lia Betarrini have learned to control their time travel, and they return from medieval Italy to save their father from his tragic death in modern times. But love calls across the centuries, and the girls are determined to return forever—even though they know the Black Plague is advancing across Europe, claiming the lives of one-third of the population. In the suspenseful conclusion of the River of Time series, every decision is about life…and death. [Taken from Goodreads]
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So this volume of The River of Time Series was....interesting. The plot again picks up right where Cascade left off, just as Cascade picked right off where Waterfall left off. Combine them and they're pretty much one long continuous story with no gabs of time between. I really like the way the plot went in this one -- I mean, I liked the plot in the first two, but this one was...I don't know, different somehow. I especially like the little sidetracked fling between Greco and Gabriella...it was interesting to see how it went. Alright, fine. I'll be honest.....I was rooting for Greco >:)
It was really nice that the main characters were so well developed - as they ought to be after two previous books! But because they were so developed everything felt a lot more real, a lot more relatable. One the flip side, I was kinda disappointed with some of the side characters. Namely, Mom and Dad Betarrini. Again, I had the same disappointment as I had with Cascade: there just wasn't enough scenes involving Mom and Dad. There weren't enough opportunities for their characters to develop, to grow. I would have at least liked to have seen some better development from Mom, since she is now a returning character. As far as development, is was like on one side there was the well developed characters: Gabi, Lia, Marcello, Luca, Greco, and then on the other side consisting of under-developed characters....everybody else.
I guess it might not seem like such a big deal to most readers, but for me, it made me feel disconnecting from those underdeveloped characters. For example, near the end one of the characters was injured -- a character that should have been a bit higher on the development scale because he/she was fairly important -- and instead of it getting some sort of decent reaction out of me, I was kinda like...."Oh....okay...." See what I'm saying? I care less about underdeveloped characters because I don't feel connected to them in any way. That particular scene was supposed to get a better reaction out of me, supposed to connect some dots between two characters, but instead, I didn't really care.
Another problem I had with underdeveloped characters was Gabi's dad. I felt like Gabi kept telling us how overly protective he was, but I never actually saw it for myself. Like, nothing he ever said or did made me feel like he was over protective. It was all tell and no show. And the telling didn't even match up with his actions - or rather, the lack thereof. Which isn't really good, considering a rather important chunk of plot revolved around Gabi's parent's over protection toward Lia and her.
As far as the romance went....well, I felt like there was definitely less "my man" and ooey gooey love-sick-teenager-ish-ness. Whoohoo! :P Sorry, I'm not a sappy romance kinda girl. However, there was a scene or two at the end that I felt was kinda....um, awkward. Like, the characters never stepped over the line of inappropriateness, but near the end there were a few implications. Nothing said outright, but you could kinda infer what was going on in the character's heads, and it was kinda....awkward. Or at least for me it felt that way. Granted, there was a wedding the next day, but still. In my opinion, keep your pre-wedding thoughts to yourself :P.
Overall I thought that this was a great edition to The River of Times Series.
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