Book Review: Endless by Amanda Gray

Endless by Amanda Gray
Published by Month9Books
I received this courtesy of the publisher.

Jenny Kramer knows she isn’t normal. After all, not everybody can see the past lives of people around them. When she befriends Ben Daulton, resident new boy, the pair stumbles on an old music box with instructions for “mesmerization” and discover they may have more in common than they thought.

Like a past life.

Using the instructions in the music box, Ben and Jenny share a dream that transports them to Romanov Russia and leads them to believe they have been there together before. But they weren’t alone. Nikolai, the mysterious young man Jenny has been seeing in her own dreams was there, too. When Nikolai appears next door, Jenny is forced to acknowledge that he has traveled through time and space to find her. Doing so means he has defied the laws of time, and the Order, an ominous organization tasked with keeping people in the correct time, is determined to send him back. While Ben, Jenny and Nikolai race against the clock—and the Order—the trio discovers a link that joins them in life—and beyond death.

Looking for a bit of magic combined with some romance and a touch of history then this could be the book for you. Jenny is a slightly odd girl who sees things when she touches people, it is never fully explained what she see but she sees things. After getting a mysterious message while playing with an Ouija board things go from weird to crazy. With flashbacks to Romanov period in Russia and time travel this sure is an interesting book.

I requested this book a long time ago off Netgalley and I just never got around to reading it. By the time I picked it up I had completely forgotten what it was about and boy was I surprised when the first flashback hit (I may have checked if I was still reading the same book). It is the time travel and historical element in this book seemed quite rushed and abrupt at times. The past and present in this book seemed slightly disjointed until about the middle where things started to make more sense and unravel.

I really don’t have very many feelings about this book, it was interesting enough to hold my attention long enough to finish it but I was left wondering about some of the plot points. Warning this could be a very very vague spoiler, really it means nothing if you haven’t read it but I like to warn. If you’ve read this did anyone else wonder why only one person had smoke inhalation when they were all there?

My favourite part of this book was the romance but I definitely had my faults with it mainly the insta-love factor. If you’re after a romantic gesture then this is the book for you. Not spoiling again it does say this in the synopsis but Nikolai comes forward in time to be with Jenny, if that isn’t love I don’t know what is. My only problem with Nikolai and Jenny’s relationship was that the whole thing was built around the time travel, the characters didn’t really know each other at all.  It was like this for a lot of aspects of the characters, things were just glossed over.

All in all I enjoyed this book but I didn’t find it very memorable. None of the characters or events will really stuck with me and that’s something I look for in a book.