If I wake

If I Wake

by Nikki Moyes

Each year, on her birthday, Lucy goes into a coma. While her mother and her doctors search for a reason for her annual comas, Lucy goes on an adventure through time.

On her first trip, she's with a tribe of early humans, helping them to survive and even teaching them how to make a bow and arrow. When she dies protecting her friend, she wakes up in the hospital, covered with rashes where she was attacked before she died in her past.

Each time after, she meets the same boy with the same family around him. She realizes that her job in all of these lives is to keep that boy alive. She saves him each year with each trip in time.

In the present time, she is bullied constantly. Her life at home isn't great, but her life at school is horrible. She's running out of time for herself. Lucy simply doesn't believe that there is reason to go on, especially when her last birthday may mean one more chance to save the boy she cares for.

Final thoughts: Decent read. I wasn't fully drawn in to her world and the first time trip was a little shocking, especially because I still can't understand how it was so easy for her to just live in that world with little to know confusion on her part. That first trip, she just started living there as if she'd always been there. The final time trip was odd and the aftermath of that last trip felt forced and didn't quite work for me, but it was OK overall.

Rating: 3/5

Wildwing

Wildwing

by Emily Whitman

Addy is the bastard child of a seamstress and no one, not even her mother, will let her forget it.  When she goes to school, she is bullied by her wealthier classmates.  When she's at home, she's told to remember her place and keep her mouth shut.

After yet another "incident" in which she loses her temper, her mother has decided that enough is enough.  She's to work for the town's eccentric inventor as his daily maid.  No longer allowed to go to school, she is forced to clean his house, make meals, and keep things in order.

But Addy never has been much of a rule-follower.  When she goes into the library that has been locked for years, she discovers not only dust and spiderwebs, but an elevator that goes through time.

Tired of being forced to live a life that she does not want, she steps into the elevator and goes back to medieval England where she's mistaken for the betrothed Lady of the local Lord.

It takes time and a lot of effort, but Addy feels like she's finally found her place in the world... and the one she's meant to be with.  Unfortunately, her soul mate isn't the Lord of the land; he's the falconer.  And now Addy has a choice to make.

Marry a man she does not love and live in the time she feels most at home, or leave forever to avoid being near her love without being able to be with him.

Final thoughts:  It takes a few pages to get into it, but once in, it's hard to let go.  While some of the choices Addy makes seem a little convenient, overall the story is good.

Rating: 4/5