Publishing date: May 22, 2012 (first published January 6, 2009)
Publisher: Square Fish
Pages: 352 (Paperback)
My rating: 3.5 stars
Summary (from Goodreads): Gwyneth Shepherd's sophisticated, beautiful cousin Charlotte has been prepared her entire life for traveling through time. But unexpectedly, it is Gwyneth who in the middle of class takes a sudden spin to a different era!
Gwyneth must now unearth the mystery of why her mother would lie about her birth date to ward off suspicion about her ability, brush up on her history, and work with Gideon—the time traveler from a similarly gifted family that passes the gene through its male line, and whose presence becomes, in time, less insufferable and more essential. Together, Gwyneth and Gideon journey through time to discover who, in the 18th century and in contemporary London, they can trust.
Well.
I don't really have much to say about this book. There's just nothing that stellar about it. Is it bad? No, not at all. But is it great? Definitely not.
I'd say that this entire book was setting up for the rest of the series. Because of that, however, it felt like over the course of first 330 pages (out of 352), absolutely nothing happened. Nothing.
Because Gwen, the main character, has never been prepared at all for time travel, the first few scenes where her time travel is uncontrolled were pretty interesting. But other than that, I'd say that the whole book was leading up to the end. Nothing really got exciting.
Actually, until the last two chapters, I was dead set on giving this book 3 stars, mainly because it was so cliche, average, and predictable. The end however, in my opinion, should have been the climax of the first book. She shouldn't have ended it there, as it was the first time that I really started to become emotionally invested in the book. Gier spent way, way too much time on exposition and introduction to the story. So, when I finally hit the last chapter/epilogue, interesting things began to happen. This was the only thing that...
a) gave me hope for the rest of the series
b) bumped it up another half star.
As far as characters go, Gwen was pretty annoying. I know that she's new to time travel and all, but she acts like a child 99% of the time. It was very frustrating for me to have to sit there and watch her figure things out, because often, she was pretty whiny and incredibly slow about it. Hopefully, in the next book, she'll be less of an amateur to time travel, so she'll have things sorted out a bit more.
Gideon, however, I liked a good bit. He was pretty annoying at the beginning of the book, as he was extremely arrogant, but as the book progressed, he softened up a little bit and stole my heart. Even when Gwen was freezing him out (annoying child that she is), he was patient with her, even though it may not have shown on the outside. Gwen's biggest problem with getting to know him was that she couldn't pick up on his mannerisms very well, so she was always at odds with him. I'm pretty sure that will get better later though, because towards the end of Ruby Red, they definitely were less angry with each other and more tolerant of one another. Who knows? We'll see what the rest of the series holds.
So, Ruby Red was a good book, but I wouldn't say that it's much more interesting than your average time travel book. I do think, however, that the plot could pick up in the next two books, which makes me anxious to read the rest of the series.
Favorite quote from the book:
“If we were in a film, the villain would turn out to be the least-expected person. But as we aren't in a film, I'd go for the character who tried to strangle you.” (I went for humor this time. Nothing too deep I picked up on.)
Peace out Girl Scouts!
-Maggs
