Sinful Book Reviews

I received this book for free from Pump Up Your Book in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I don’t know why, but the idea of time travel is always interesting to me. Anytime I come across books with time travel elements, I feel like I must read it. Needless to say, when I got the invite to participate in this blog tour, I immediately said, “yes, please!” The fact it’s YA and published by an indie publishing house just made it all so much sweeter.

I have to say, I’m pretty impressed. I feel like there’s a kind of stigma attached to books that aren’t published by giants like HarperCollins or Penguin Random House. It’s something we all have to teach ourselves to look past. Sometimes, when I’m reading an book published by and indie press, I can tell why it wouldn’t be picked up by a larger publisher (not that all authors are interested in being picked up by large publishers). The Keeper of the Black Stones is definitely NOT one of those books. I was captivated from the beginning and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

I’ll admit part of the reason I immediately loved The Keeper of the Black Stones is because it includes time travel, and I love time travel stories. A huge part was the history though. I think what I’ve always loved so much about time travel stories is that it molds a contemporary story and a historical story into one. McHugh does a fabulous job of that. Jason is an awkward, shy teen and is just as contemporary as every other teen. Yet, he’s thrown into a historical world. I don’t know much about The War of the Roses, so it was fun to learn about it through this book. I might even have to track down some good nonfiction on the topic. I also love that the time travel aspect wasn’t complicated. It was straight forward, and had an original twist to it that I haven’t come across in any books I’ve read. I’m no time travel lit expert, but I found it refreshing. The supporting characters were developed and I became genuinely invested in them. Even the historical characters were more developed than I expected. I loved that! On top of all that, McHugh’s writing was genuine, witty, and completely appropriate for his story.

This time travel adventure comes highly recommended from me. It’s a wonderful feeling when I finish a blog tour book and I could just hug it. There’s so much geeky fun going on in this book. Huge thanks to Pump Up the Book for introducing me to this one!

Okay, when’s book two out?