This book contains:
- Domestic and family violence
- Stalking
- Kidnapping
- Suicide
- Gambling addiction
- Gladiator fighting and wounds depicted in detail.
As a time slip novel, we have four main characters: Caterina, Connor, Raedwald and Aemilia.
Caterina is of Italian descent living in the modern world in a marriage she’s not entirely happy in. She’s a strong woman doing her best with what she has to work with, but she’s also incredibly isolated in her life.
Connor is staying in Italy while he completes his thesis for his PHD in volcanology. He’s a friendly, happy go lucky kinda guy when he meets Caterina and finds himself changing his idea of what he wants for his life.
Raedwald is from a tribe in the Frisia region when he was betrayed by his half brother and sold as a slave to the Romans. Through that, he was sold into the Gladiator system and spent more than 6 years fighting for his life daily with a single goal. To take out revenge on his half-brother and stepmother and get his place back in his tribe.
Aemilia is a Roman noble lady living within the Roman society while doing her best to be ready to support herself if, and when she is left to support herself and her daughter. She’s aware of the limitations and challenges facing her in her situation, but she’s still trying to figure out what and how she can make the changes she wants.
Our four characters are following almost dual storylines with the challenges they’re facing with some differences between them. Both timelines had slow starts with moments of intense drama that slowly increased in frequency as their situations were unfolded and explored.
Christina Courtney is known for great time travel and time slip romances and I’ve enjoyed every single one I’ve read. While most of the ones I’ve read of hers is time travel, the previous time slip was quite different to this one.
Instead of the historical time period supporting the modern time, this was two distinct stories that happened to run concurrently. In a way, the two timelines had nothing to do with each other, and yet they were still intricately linked supporting each story.
While I’m excited to get back to her Runes series, this was such a great story where I could tell how much research she’d done to be historically accurate which made the story so much more enriching. And something I noticed in the version I read was that Christina spoke about the research she’d done and how it contributed to the story and why she made decisions she did.
And then finished on a bonus chapter back in AD times that again linked us back to the ending of the modern timeline!
Continue to read further down to find out about the author.
