Review: Into The Dim

Into The Dim by Janet B. Taylor
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
Release Date: March 1st, 2016
Source: ALA Midwinter
Date Read: 3/8/16 to 3/10/16
432 pages

Rating: ✰✰1/2

When fragile, sixteen-year-old Hope Walton loses her mom to an earthquake overseas, her secluded world crumbles. Agreeing to spend the summer in Scotland, Hope discovers that her mother was more than a brilliant academic, but also a member of a secret society of time travelers. Trapped in the twelfth century in the age of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hope has seventy-two hours to rescue her mother and get back to their own time. Along the way, her path collides with that of a mysterious boy who could be vital to her mission . . . or the key to Hope’s undoing.

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I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Quotes taken from ARC may or may not be in the published edition.

I am a pretty sad munchkin today. You see. I have been anticipating Into The Dim since 1994, okay, summer of 2015. I anticipated it so much, that I sent in my very first galley request via email, to the wrong publishers of course. I have been rejected twice on Edelweiss for this. But FINALLY, I got an eARC through Netgalley, though it was Read Now. Then, I asked for this same book at ALA, and got the last copy of it! With the other cover too, not this one (I don't like this cover, sorry).

But here's the point to my rambling. I really, really wanted to read Into The Dim. And I stopped at nothing to get an ARC of it. And at the end, here I am. Disappointed. Well not entirely, but a lot.

Hope Walton just lost her mother to an earthquake, and she's devastated. Fully convinced that her mother did not die, she stops at nothing to get the answers she needs, even if that means traveling to Scotland to meet the her mother's family. The one that, apparently, can time travel. And no, her mother isn't dead, but alive in another time period. Which is why Hope, and her new friends, need to find her before the other rival family catches up to them. Which, too late, they did.

I guess I'll start out with what I did like. Traveling to the 12th Century was cool. I really liked learning about that time period. I didn't know who Eleanor of Aquitaine was until, well now, when I looked her up. The plot itself was engaging, though I do admit the beginning was a hella lot of info dumping and just slow.

And the characters. And the romance. The romance itself was not necessary, like I do not care about this Bran character. And I'm positive that Collum will be an added love interest later in the series, just to make a love triangle. No I do not want.

Also, the entire story was fairly easy to predict. I didn't like Hope as a character, she just didn't connect to me at all. And she seems to be fairly judgey of others, and OH has eidetic memory in that she remembers everything and is super knowledgeable. And don't forget the usual "beautiful but doesn't know it" characteristic.

I don't want to go into the time travel. I don't know how to explain it, and apparently Nikola Tesla was involved? Again, it was an info dump.

I'm sad. I am. I think this is one of the worst time travel books I have read. And you know what else? I kept relating it back to Seeker, a book I absolutely loathed last year. And that just didn't sit right with me, and the more I think about Into The Dim, the less I like it.