Brianna Daniels, a modern day heroine, goes on a hot air balloon ride as a publicity stunt. Unbeknownst to her, Scott Martin, a 15 year-old computer genius tinkers below and accidently creates a time warp. Brianna is sucked in and switches places with her great great grandmother who is on her way to the Split Rock Pony Express Station as a mail-order bride to the station master, Lucas Daniels. Unfortunately Lucas didn't order a bride, the two Pony Express Riders did because Lucas is such a terrible cook. Lucas is there because he's been burned by love and wants to get as far away from women as he can- which in 1860 meant Wyoming. Now he's not only stuck with a woman he dosen't want, she's a woman with 21st century attitudes!

WELCOME TO THE European "A Window in Time" BOOK RING!

There were enough responses from Europe to warrant a separate bookring. Members are as follows - member in bold currently has posession of the book: (If you wish to join, please PM me and I will add you!)

MEMBER / LOCATION:

YokoSpungeon / London, UK
Leighspeak /England
dutch-flybaby / Netherlands
citrus /Austria
Scrawler / Poland
Zarylia /Poland
This book ring is now underway!

If you wish to be added to the list, please PM me with your details. Note that you must be prepared to mail internationally.

You will be sending the book to the person who appears after you in the list, so you need to PM them to get their address!

It's not a race, but please read and send the book on as speedily as you can, other people are dying to read it too.

Please journal the book once you have received it (so we all know where it currently is) and again when you have read it (so we know what you thought of it!)

If you're the last person on the list (i.e. we run out of members) the book comes back to me until there are more interested parties...

The book arrived today - what a pretty cover - almost good enough to eat! Can't wait to get reading...thanks for organising the ring CML. More from me when I've read it.

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14th March 2004

I have just finished reading this book - what a corker, I genuinely enjoyed it.

I am not normally a fan of the romance genre, so I was so pleased to find that this has more than just romance, it is a really pacy, modern, well written novel.

The plot cleverly enables a healthy portion of bodice ripping to be combined with a modern woman's eyebrow raise at crinolines, as the two main protagonists swap places through a time warp.

Thanks so much CML for sharing this with us. This was really good fun and I plan to buy a copy for my mother who I know would just LOVE this book.

My one criticism would be that I discovered quite a few typos whilst reading. I am going to send a list of these to CML so the next print run can be glitch free.

Will post out to Leighspeak ASAP.

Received today thank you Yokospungeon.

19 March 2004:

Delighted to have read the book, thanks for passing it on...Time travel and romance, a nice combination :-)

I'll pass it on to the next person on the list

24th March 2004:

Posted to dutch-flybaby :-) controlled release

Today I bought a house and found this book in my new mailbox the same evening :)
It will go on top of my mount TBR and will be the next book I start reading (after carefully airing the book as it is quite smokey).
I look forward to reading it and will be sure to journal when I finish.

If you don't want to know too much about the story before you read the book,
don't read this journal entry.

Finished the book yesterday. I liked the book and I also think there is room for improvement.
I have made the following notes about this book (because you wanted to know):
- the timelines don’t match: it’s not a problem that in 1995 they have only one week to fix things and in 1860 Brianna experiences her time there as months/close to a year, but Brianna has seen attempts to reach her twice already when in 1995 they have not even gotten the supplies to reach her yet in 1995. It’s ok to jump between 1995 and 1860 but synchronizing the two stories will make the reading better
- from the beginning Brianna suspects that Lucas might not be her great great grandfather; he’s afraid of hights (page 100), would never get into a hot air balloon he says (page 100) and Ian fits the description of her great great grandfather in Anna’s diary much better than Lucas (page 148). The stampede and Lucas’ bunk being destroyed confirms Lucas could not have been Brianna’s great great grandfather. Brianna seems a smart woman. Why does she suddenly not see the obvious anymore ? I find this a typical cheap romance feature, that does not belong in this book.
- there are not many interactions between Lucas and Brianna in the beginning but somewhere she says Lucas doesn’t like her, while the story suggests he’s just been ignoring her. The first week in 1860 would have been the most difficult, but there’s hardly anything written about it. A lost chance I think to define the relationship between Lucas and Brianna
- when Ian arrives Lucas tells him that ‘Brianna has her own words for things’ (page 150). After this there are several occasions were she uses a modern word that needs to be explained. Before page 150 there are hardly ever mix-ups like this. That doesn’t make sense.
- there were some words not correctly spelled. Sorry, I haven’t written them down.
I do want to say a big WOW about the switch between Tom and Daniel in the end. I really didn't see that one coming and I loved it!
I'll mail this book to citrus asap. Thanks for sharing :)

Release planned for Saturday, April 10, 2004 at A mailbox near my home in Ede, Gelderland Controlled Releases.

This book is all wrapped up and ready to mail to Citrus. Happy reading!

just received it today (btw, thanks for the postcard dutch-flybaby)...

as i'm not a big fan of romances in general, i was really suprised as i found myself unable to put it down last night (i read until late into the morning...) because normally romances don't catch me that way... i think there are a few weak spots in the story and the end was very obvious to me (btw, I really liked the ending, don't think i do not...) but overall, i really enjoyed reading it and had to some good laughs over lucas and briannas sarcasm! thanks for sharing :)

btw, i have to agree with dutch-flybaby, the timeline was a little bit strange but as i enjoyed reading briannas part a little more than annas that wasn't a big problem for me :)

will send the book out next monday...

Just got thsi in the mail today. I'm in the middle of The Grapes of Wrath right now - and its a school project so I have to finish that off, but the minute I'm done I'll start A Window in Time, I promise. It looks good - thanks for organizing this ring!

The minute I got this book I thought "uh-oh." I'm not familiar with romance novels because I don't read them, so I didn't recognize what Harper Mongram was. But as I read through it, I found myself pulled into the story more and more. The plot was fascinating, I couldn't wait to see what would happen at the end. I loved the timelines - for example how the chicken came to Brianna through the mist and wasn't explained until later on in the book. I though that was very interesting and entertaining. I also liked the characters. I thought Billy and Seth were great, but Brianna was a little disappointing in that she was made out to be a strong, 20th century woman but seemed to lose that strength somewhere along the way.
However, as I have mentioned before, I don't read romances. I'd always planned on reading one, just to see what it was like, and now I have. To be frank,the romantic cliches made me cringe, but I know that's all part of the romance genre and other people love them. Overall I really enjoyed the rest of the book. Thanks for organizing the ring CML!

Passed the book to Zarylia yesterday.

Yes its true...I have the book. I was kind of hoping I could pretend it was still on the way to me as I've got two other 5 bookrings here at the moment. ;-P Oh well, it's not so bad. It's quite convenient actually as this book looks absolutely perfect for airplane reading which is good since I'll be spending many LONG hours in airports and planes on June 10th. Well that's all for now; I'll read this as soon as possible. Thanks everyone!

I've finished the book and what can I say... I loved it! The cliches were hilarious, I'm not sure if they were intended to be but I don't think it really matters because they made me really enjoy the book! :-D I liked the timelines as well because I found myself more interested in Brianna's story anyway. I kind of wish it had been explained why the passage of time was different on both sides but it really didn't seem to be that big of a deal. I noticed the typos as well but it seems as if YokoSpungeon has taken care of that already. :-) If I had to complain about something it would be that the ending was fairly obvious; I had a pretty good idea by the end of the 5th chapter what was going to happen, and it really annoyed me the Brianna, a seemingly logical and intelligent woman, could not for the life of her figure it out. The GOOD thing though is that I had no idea how the ending was going to come about, and like that over-used saying goes, the destination doesn't matter, the journey does, and I found the journey highly enjoyable! I PMed CML offering to send it back to her and she requested that I release it in Europe somewhere so that's exactly what I'll do. As I won't be back until August though I'll probably lend it to a couple friends around here in the mean time. Thanks CML for starting this ring!

Zarylia gave this book to me saying that I have to read at least one romance novel in my life- despite the fact that I really don't have the patience for them- and that this is the one.

I liked this book. I didn't expect to, but I couldn't help but enjoy it. I think it helps a lot that Brianna isn't the docile, ditzy, empty-headed leading female character that I tend to associate (rather unfairly, I guess) with romances. Instead, she was an independant woman of the 20th century that can think for herself and DOES, and doesn't let anyone control her.

I'm a sucker when it comes to time-travel too. It's a by-product of my love of the supernatural and my love for history. When I can't sleep at night, I sometimes just lay back and imagine being transported into another time, and try to come up with all the disturbances I would make. It's fun! I've decided that, depending on how far I went back, I'd either be publicly flogged, or burned at the stake for all of my ideas and behaviors.

But as for the book-- as I've said, I enjoyed Brianna and Lucas's story, although I did figure out less than a quarter of the way through it what was going to happen. I didn't like Anna. Or Tom for that matter. I groaned whenever the next chapter ended up taking place in 1995. Out of this whole romance novel Anna and Tom ended up with the most romantic cliches- and those just bother me. The fact that a fifteen-year-old was the person who invented the bizaree time machine was rather unrealistic, too. But then again, the whole concept of time-travel is unrealistic, so who am I to talk!

So, once again, Zarylia proves me wrong ( I hate it when that happens ;p ) I did enjoy this book. And now it goes back to her, so when she returns to Poland in August she can release it there.

The book is back with me and I'll be releasing it once I get back to Poland, probably around the end of August. I'll keep you posted...