One hour to rewrite the past…

For seventeen-year-old Emerson Cole, life is about seeing what isn’t there; swooning Southern Belles; soldiers long forgotten; a haunting jazz trio that vanishes in an instant. Plagued by phantoms since her parents’ death, she just wants the apparitions to stop so she can be normal. She’s tried everything, but the visions keep coming back.

So when her well-meaning brother brings in a consultant from a secretive organization called the Hourglass, Emerson’s willing to try one last cure. But meeting Michael Weaver may not only change her future, it may change her past.

Who is this dark, mysterious, sympathetic guy, barely older than Emerson herself, who seems to believe every crazy word she says? Why does an electric charge seem to run through the room whenever he’s around? And why is he so insistent that he needs her help to prevent a death that never should have happened?

Meet Emerson Cole, not your regular seventeen-year-old teenager. She’s back in Ivy Springs after her scholarship for senior year in a boarding school in Sedona, AZ, was cut. She left town a couple of years ago, after an incident at the cafeteria of her school, when she had a loud argument with a guy about how rude he was to take her seat. She had threatened to poke him with her fork, but, well, she was the only one seeing the guy. It happens that Emerson is the only one to see these people from the past since a little bit before her parents died in an accident. As you can imagine, after the school incident people thought she was going crazy.

Emerson was hospitalized and heavily medicated, and then the “hallucinations” where gone for a while. However, as time went by, she stopped taking the medications, she was sick of feeling numb all the time. Slowly, the visions returned, but now she has developed a way to identify if the people she’s seeing are real or not: their clothing. What happens is that she sees people from the past, so she can tell you from which decade they are just paying attention to their clothes and details. If she touches them they disappear, something that seems to shock them as much as shocked her when she first found out.

Emerson is trying to adapt to her new reality, back in town and living with her older brother, Thomas, and his wife, Dru, when Thomas asks her to see one more “specialist”. He’s been wasting tons of money taking her to people who say they can help her, and, obviously, so far nothing has worked. This time Emerson meets Michael, a handsome young guy who apparently can help her for real. He works for the Hourglass, a place where they help people with special abilities, like hers. Michael calls the people of her visions ripples, and he tells her they’re not ghosts, they’re actually a collateral effect of her true ability: Emerson can time travel. This news shock her and make their relationship even more complicated: at the same time she’s drawn to him, she knows he’s keeping things from her.

Hourglass started a little bit too slow for me, but as the narrative progressed I felt myself drawn to it just like Emerson is drawn to Michael. I’ve read time travel novels before, but this one was, hands down, the most enjoyable of them. Emerson is an interesting character and although I wanted to shake her and make her come to reality sometimes, I liked her very much. However, my favorite character is Lily, Emerson’s best friend. Lily has secrets of her own that takes forever for Emerson to realize, and she’s adorable—and the fact that her grandma owns the Murphy’s Law coffeehouse just gave her more points with me LOL This book has some cliches—like any other—, but overall it was a great reading for me. I love the cover, it’s so different! I’m looking forward to reading the next book of this series, for sure.

Author: Myra Mcentire
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre(s): Young Adult, Science Fiction, Romance
Publisher: EgmontUSA
Publication date: May 8, 2012
Pages: 390
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My favorite quotes on this book are bellow.

“I’m glad you’re home.”
That made one of us.

My brother had a gift for making broken things shine. I was pretty sure he was hoping that tonight his magic would work on me.

Welcome to insanity.

If she didn’t have a wicked sense of humor and more loyalty than a Saint Bernard, I would probably hate her on principle alone.

“How does tomorrow sound?”
Too soon.

“Life is about gains and losses,” he said, the pain winning out over the anger in his eyes. “You know that firsthand.”
Except my life was too heavy on the losses.

“He’s going to think I tried too hard.”
“He’s going to be too busy looking at you to think much of anything.”

It’s amazing what flipping a grown man over her shoulder does for a girl.

Even though he’d made me furious yesterday, I couldn’t deny that the attraction still existed.
I was an idiot.

Your size makes you seem delicate, like a spiderweb. But the wise fly knows that delicate can also be strong.

“That’s a little complicated,” he said, drumming his fingertips on the glass tobletop again.
“Why is that your favorite answer for everything?”

“Christopher Reeve and self-hypnosis? Doctor Who and his phone booth? Hermione and the Time Turner?”
“Doctor Who had a police box.” He kept his gaze level. “But I’m glad to hear it’s not a foreign concept.”

So if I want to go somewhere in the past, I can? What do I have to do? Close my eyes and picture where I want to go? Click my heels together three times and say “Neolithic Age”?

“Number two: He might be his own brand of crazy.”
“Crazy like he’s a serial killer, or crazy like he attends Star Trek conventions in full costume?”
“That’s only crazy if you dress like a Klingon,” I pointed out.

Autumn always fascinated me—so much beauty in dying. Leaves holding on until the bitter end, finally going down in a blaze of glory, almost as if they were trying to convince us to keep them alive.

“Funny, gorgeous, and a genious. What a package.” He backed out of the parking space, smiling as he drove away.
I loved that he left crazy off the list.
I loved it even more that he would never think to add it.

If he wasn’t already holding my heart in the palm of his hand, I would have taken it out and given it to him right then.

She was so cool and I almost considered becoming a physicist. Almost.

I had a dilemma. I could find absolutely no good reason to slap te girl standing in the kitchen door.
And I really wanted one.

Now I hoped he was telling he truth, because if he wasn’t, my hallucinations had taken a whole new turn. For the worse.

“It’s not my goal to freak you out.”
“Too bad,” I answered. “Because that one was so solid it didn’t even touch the net.”

“Does the fact that such a thing is possible upset you?”
“No more than any of the rest of it.”

“Do you need a second?”
I needed a millennium.

My ass was grass, and big brother was the lawn mower.

“It’s not what you think,” I said defensively.
“Then I’m very disappointed for you.”
That made two of us.

Does your brother have a gun? If so, get Delicious a bulletproof vest. That boy is way too pretty to have a big hole in him.

“Michael. I am a freak. So are you, so is Cat, so are Dune and Nate, and so is… whoever else the Hourglass has helped.” I didn’t want to make Ava part of this conversation. “But for the first time in my life, it’s actually okay. Now I’m a freak with a purpose.”

So much had happened since I returned to Ivy Springs. I leaned back and closed my eyes. My whole world felt upside down. A month ago, I didn’t know what rips were. I didn’t know what my ability meant. I didn’t know Michael existed. Things were a lot simpler.
And a lot less interesting.

“You’re going to be such an excellent mother.”
“If you were my child, I would staple you to your bedroom wall.”
I blew her a kiss and shut the door softly behind me.

“Okay. Wow. What are you going for with this look? Are you headed for a Playboy Bunny convention? Because whatever you’re doing, I can guess it’s not making coffee.”
“I’m throwing my hat in the ring, staking a claim, making my intentions known. It’s kind of like… a dog peeing on a fire hydrant.”
“I could’ve done without that visual.”

I swear on every coffee bean in the universe that I’m not a vampire.

Kaleb sat silently for a second, his eyes wide as he looked at Michael. “Where did you find her? Can you get me one?”

“You should probably apologize to Emerson.”
“I am sorry.” Kaleb grinned at me. “Sorry I didn’t meet you first.”

Team Freak. Wonder if we could get jerseys.

Even if I was already halfway there, I could still make a U-turn.
Even if I thought it might kill me.

I learned all about it in counseling. Seven stages. And guess what? Four of them suck. Where’s the balance? Why not eight stages of grief? Give me some kind of benchmark for my suffering; let me know I’m halfway there.

I love you—broken in pieces, whole, however. No matter what the future brings. No matter what was in the past.

Screw what the world expects. Think about all the things you’ve faced. You cracked, but you didn’t break. You’re still standing. I’d call that fearless. You’ve already conquered so much.

No matter what your reality looks like, you’re the girl I’m in love with today, and the same girl I’ll be in love with tomorrow and all the days after that. Not just because of who you are, but because of who you were.

It’s okay to be afraid, but you don’t have to give in. You have what it takes to fight it.