Me on Every Never After

Title: Every Never After
Author: Lesley Livingston
Release Date: March 12, 2013
Publisher: Razorbill Canada (Penguin Canada imprint)

Despite their vow, best friends Clare and Allie once more find themselves in trouble, and traveling through time. Indulging in a low-key vacation at Glastonbury Tor, taking part in an archeological dig while soaking up the sights of summertime England, the girls promised each other three things. No time travel shenanigans, no involvement with dangerous Druids or villainous museum thieves, and no weirdness about the fact that Clare is now dating Allie's super hot genius cousin, Milo. But when Allie makes a discovery at the dig site, the skull transports her back in time to a Roman encampment besieged by rampaging Celts. Caught between the Legions and the war band, Allie is rescued from certain death by Marcus, a young Roman soldier with a secret. As she struggles to survive in the past, Clare and Milo race against time in the present to bring her back before she loses her head or her heart.

Every Never After is a welcome return to an entertaining series with witty and intelligent characters. A return to Clare and Allie means a return to 1st century Britain with a little time travel to help them along, a return to blood magic and raging Celts and Druids, a return to complicated time streams and ingenious teen girls. But things are different now, this time it's Allie who travels back in time, and it's up to Clare to help bring her back.

Things are a lot more complicated this time around. Now Allie is trapped in the past and Clare and Milo are racing to find away to bring her back without bringing two worlds together and crashing everything into everything else. The stakes are so much higher than they were before, merely a month ago to Clare and Allie, and so much is at risk of disappearing.

It's never easy for Allie and Clare. Time is fickle, working against them along with Druid magic and villainous thieves. But what makes this book so entertaining is Allie and Clare themselves. They're passionate and sometimes foolish and headstrong, but they're smart, they're ingenious and intelligent, and they always seem to find a way to fix what was broken by a rather pompous time-traveling man.

Time travel is so complicated, so intricate and delicate. There are consequences to messing with time, there are paradoxes, and every loose thread must be tied off. Or everything Clare and Allie have done with be for naught.

With both this book and its predecessor, Lesley Livingston combines history, science fiction, and witty characters to bring readers something entertaining, cleverly disguising a possible British history lesson with a lot of action and intrigue. This book turns up the suspense, the excitement, the danger, the time travel complications, and at the end left me breathless and desperate for a third book.

(I received an e-galley to review from Penguin Canada through NetGalley.)