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?

I really enjoyed Keeper of the Black Stones. The summary of this one really caught my attention because I love history and time travel. Keeper of the Black Stones was great and certainly kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time.

Jason is a typical teenage boy but he has special set of stones that allows him to jump through time. He now must go save his grandfather from a man who can possibly destroy the world. Jason made an excellent protagonist. He was a believable character that I was immediately cheering on. He is also developed really well through the course of the story. There were several other fantastic characters that I enjoyed getting to know, especially Paul who is Jason's best friend.

I loved how this book opened in the past because it instantly hooked me in. As I said earlier, I love history so it was so much fun jumping back in time to England. I liked that the reader learns about the stones early on and everything is explained clearly. I'm always nervous when I read a book that has time travel involved because it can get kind of confusing, but I definitely didn't need to have any fears reading this book.

The writing was great and there was a strong voice consistent throughout the book. The plot flowed really well also and there was a great amount of excitement. I just really loved going on this adventure with Jason and there were plenty of twists that I wasn't expecting. I already can't wait to read the sequel! Overall Keeper of the Black Stones is exciting and takes you on an adventure. I strongly recommend this one!


Review posted on thereadinggeek.blogspot.com