The Tides of Time: A Storm Tide Romance
In 1793, seamstress Lili Minet is helping innocent people escape the Reign of Terror with her own brother, Gérard, an agent of the Tribunal, hunting her down. Forced into flight, Lili falls into the stormy waters of the Channel only to be pulled by lighthouse keepers Grandpa and Armitage Pierce into a world she doesn’t recognize: a world of matches, trains, ready-made clothing, and, more importantly, the warm, peaceful community of Loftstone Island.
Lili has been brought to 1873 Britain by the Tides of Time, a phenomenon surrounding the fictional Loftstone, and as she struggles to adjust to this new world, her wariness toward Armitage melts into attraction, kindled by his kindness and humor despite his own tragedy of having lost his parents to the sea a decade earlier. Just when Lili feels she’s found a new home, the Tides of Time deposit Géraud on the island, and he is determined to drag her back to the nightmare Lili thought she had left behind.
Eden excels at warm, well-crafted romances where trust builds sweetly and in small, believable ways. Her humor allays Lili’s war trauma and Armitage’s grief. Characters are sympathetic and mostly good-natured, her fictional Loftstone lightly but convincingly drawn. The surprises and dramatic action of the last quarter of the book repay patience with the slow build. Timeslip novels can be notoriously tricky, but Eden makes her leaps and overlaps adhere to a logical enough process that one can follow the twists. The prose is strong and assured, though a reader must enjoy French, or better yet, understand it. This first in a series that breaks new ground for Eden is sure to have fans following her to the finish.
