Review: Time After Time, by Wendy Godding

Title: Time After Time
Author: Wendy Godding
Genre: YA Paranormal/Historical Fiction
Publication Date: April 1, 2014

She has died countless times before, and she is not going to let it happen again.

Abbie Harper dies just before her eighteenth birthday. It has happened before, more times than she can remember — and always at the hands of the same man. Her dreams are plagued with past lives, cut short.

But this latest dream feels different. Her past life as Penelope Broadhurst — an English pastor’s daughter in 1806 — keeps bleeding into her present life in ways both sinister and familiar. As Penelope meets and falls in love with the dashing Heath Lockwood, so too does Abbie meet the brothers Marcus and Rem Knight. One wants to love her; the other to kill her.
Time is running out for Penelope, but as Abbie mourns her inability to change the past, she chases the slim chance to save her future. To survive, she must solve the puzzle of an ancient love story…and Penelope just might be able to help. -Goodreads

1 Star

*Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book.*

When I see this book:

This book was horrible. It epitomized the word horrible.


I was unaware that books like these are still being written. I'm referring to Fallen doppelgängers, complete with a Mary Sue and a dreaded love triangle.

Time After Time is the story of a girl who time after time (see what I did there) is reincarnated for some odd reason (I'm sure anyone can figure this out). She is Abbie in the modern day, and Penelope in 1806. She has two "lovers": Marcus (Heath) and Sebastian (Rem). Oh, poop! She keeps dying! She shouldn't stay away from these two stalkers or anything!

First, the main character, Abbie, needs to be discussed. This. Girl. Is. Intolerable. She's a wannabe goth/hipster, hates everyone in her high school, and looks down her nose at everyone (in BOTH her lives). And oh! She reads Jane Eyre - which she was constantly banging on my head - so she must be better than everyone.

"What? And look like them [her classmates]?" I spat. "Like teenage replicas from Seventeen magazine? No. Thank. You."

Aaand another "wtf" moment:

"The bus was the epitome of hell for me, as Lilly and Emma were regular travelers of it, a fact that I found odd for popular teenage girls."

So, ahem, I guess you should stop riding the bus now, since it has become so "mainstream"?

Her alternate persona, Penelope, is just as unbearable. She whines, she is spineless, and overall, she is speshul. She can't decide between the two brothers, Creep and Creeper. But, certainly, it's true wuv! Who cares if they barely know each other, if there's "electricity", then obviously it's meant 2 b.

"It's been little more than a week!"
"I know, and I hardly understand it myself," he said, "but I know my heart and feelings. I know you are the one for me, Penelope. From the first moment I saw you, I knew it. A month. A week. A year. Time won't change how I feel-I'm sure of it. What we have is timeless."

Can I just, like, barf. It's like Luce and Daniel all over again. (-_-) And to add to the similarities to Fallen, Penelope is a passive blob, accepting everything that happens to her with no reaction.

I'll put this out here from now: I'm very picky when it comes to romance. Either you make it believable or not - there is no inbetween. Clearly, Time After Time has not satisfied me. In both time periods.

"But honestly, Abbie, I think about you all the time. And I've been having these really weird dreams about you."

A normal person with common sense would have alarm bells ringing in their head. But no! Abbie/Penelope accepts her fate wholeheartedly.

And the love triangle, one of the worst parts of the book. If a guy is trying to kill you, why would you even fantasize about kissing him?

"It was as if he was my master, and I nothing more than a willing slave." 

Romance was not the only aspect in which this book utterly failed. I was eager for this book because of the so-called history, but did I get anything akin to that? That's a big fat NO.

There were no historical references. At times the dialogue was mixed between the shifting of the two eras, with Penelope saying something is "totally endearing" and Abbie saying it was "most troubling."

The reincarnation bit made absolutely no sense. Sorry if the MC magically knew about everything beforehand, but an explanation would be great.

All other characters, excepting the protagonist and her two love interests, are merely used as plot devices and not characters. The only thing that matters in this novel is Abbie and her true wuv, and screw everything else. The dialogue and writing were signs of the author's amateurity, and there was little effort put into world-building or character development. Godding evidently put far too much effort into the romance, which will turn off many readers. At times it felt like I was reading a New Adult novel.

It seems like the author was going for some sort of combination of Jane Eyre and Fallen, and what resulted was this disgusting mess.

*All quotes are taken from an uncorrected copy and are subject to change.*