Book Review: The Hourglass Door by Lisa Mangum

The Hourglass Door
Hourglass Door #1
Author: Lisa Mangum
Reading Level: YA
Genre: Fantasy/Romance
Published: May 13th 2009
Review Source: Author
Available: Amazon

Summary: (from goodreads) His past. Her future. Can love bring them together in time?Abby's senior year of high school is textbook perfect: She has a handsome and attentive boyfriend, good friends, good grades, and plans to attend college next year. But when she meets Dante Alexander, a foreign-exchange student from Italy, her life suddenly takes a different turn. He's mysterious, and interesting, and unlike anyone she's ever met before. Abby can't deny the growing attraction she feels for him. Nor can she deny the unusual things that seem to happen when Dante is around. Time behaves differently when they are together - traveling too fast or too slow or sometimes seeming to stop altogether. When the band Zero Hour performs at the local hangout, Abby realizes that there's something dangerous about the lead singer, Zo, and his band mates, Tony and V. Oddly, the three of them are also from Italy and have a strange relationship to Dante. They also hold a bizarre influence over their audience when performing. And Abby's best friend, Valerie, is caught in their snare. Dante tells Abby the truth of his past: he once worked for Leonardo Da Vinci, helping to design and build a time machine. When Dante was falsely implicated as a traitor to his country, he was sent through the machine more than five hundred years into the future as punishment. As the past and the present collide, Abby learns that she holds a special power over the flow of time itself. She and Dante must stop Zo from opening the time machine's door and endangering everyone's future. More than one life is at stake and Abby's choice could change everything.

Let’s begin my review with the cover. The cover of The Hourglass Door reminds me of the Harry Potter series and although I’ve never read nor watched any of the movies it gives me the sense of this historical, mysterious adventure which is exactly what Lisa Magnum delivers in this story. The story captures you from the start and having put it down a couple of times, I was always eager to get back to it and see what happened next. What an easily readable book about a paranormal romance storyline without any vampires or werewolves that we are all used to seeing. The characters in this story are amazingly life-like. You can actually see/imagine the love between Dante and Abby, (reminds me of Edward and Bella) Lisa definitely worked her magic with those two.

Life couldn't get any better. Last year of High School - Check, College plans - Check, steady, perfect boyfriend - Check, amazing friends - check but Abby feels incomplete. That’s until Dante arrives. From Italian decent, foreign exchange student Dante not only rocks Abby’s world but everyone in it.

I highly recommend this refreshing read to any and everyone who’s looking for a little paranormal romance and needs a little vacay from vampires and werewolves.