This was a book that I, unfortunately, just did not enjoy. I had a really difficult time getting through it. The writing wasn't awful--for me it was the story, itself.
I still really do appreciate the opportunity to read and review.

I was provided an ARC via Netgalley and Inkyard Press, all opinions are my own.

Full disclosure, I've followed Sasha on youtube and instagram for quite a while, so I've been following the development of "Project Red" as she called this book for several years. If you follow Sasha, you can tell she put alot of herself and her personal experiences and emotions into the book. Her love of YA fantasy and the relationship she has with both of her parents really shine through. While I've never read or seen Outlander, I do know Sasha is a big fan and you can tell that this has been greatly influenced by her love of the series and her love of Scotland.

This is being marketed as a YA fantasy and romance. I found the writing and character development to be a bit on the juvenile side. I felt that the character development and writing in general were lacking. On the plus side, I think both have alot of potential. There is some interesting mythology, time travel, and the romance is what I consider an insta-love situation. I didn't feel any chemistry between the two main characters as far as the romance goes, but I think that will develop over time as the series progresses. The events in the book take place over a short amount of time, so the characters don't really get to know one another or develop much of a relationship, but by the last chapter they are in love. This like many of of the events in the book happen as a matter of convenience without much development or explanation. I often found myself going back and rereading paragraphs or pages because I felt like I missed some critical piece of information. With this being an ARC that may not be the case with the final version that releases in a few weeks, but I often felt like critical information was left out. It made the book feel disjointed and often took away from my enjoyment of the story. I felt that the world building was decent and I enjoyed the folklore/mythology aspects of the book.

I really wanted to like this book, and I feel like had the author stuck with either the romance aspect or the fantasy aspect of the plot I would have really liked this. I hope to see both of those aspects develop as the series continues. I think this series has alot of potential and I look forward to seeing where it goes in the next book. This does end on quite the cliffhanger! I do appreciate that Sasha put so much of her own life into the books, unfortunately I think her writing style may not be for me.

I wanted to like this. I wanted Sasha to hit a home run but that is not what happened here. It reads like a very young teen who is doing things way too old and reacts accordingly. I have been watching Sasha's channel since the beginning but I just wouldn't buy it for the library.

I really wanted to love this! I absolutely love outlander. I love time travel stories. I think they are so much fun to read. While it was very interesting at some parts it kinda seemed a little jumbled at times. I would definitely read another story by this author. She definitely has potential!

Time travel in books is tricky. It has to be very cleverly done in order to work well. If it’s too intricate, it can discourage a reader from enduring through the book; if it’s too simple, the story seems superficial and becomes a disappointment. And since time travel romance books are a dime a dozen nowadays, with the trope being it’s own category and all, readers will be hard pressed to find an entirely new concept in any time travel romance book published today.

That being said, I’m not sure I read the same synopsis (or the same book) that some other reviewers on Goodreads did. I don’t think it sounds anything like Outlander, save for the fact that it’s a time travel romance, the main character's name is similar to Claire, and it’s set in Scotland. In this narrative, it's the man who travels through time, not the woman. He is from 16th century Scotland, not 18th—well before the first Jacobite rebellion—during the reign of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. The country was still Catholic, Bonnie Prince Charlie still a distant dream. The characters in this story are more involved with time and the travel through it than those in the volumes of Outlander with which I’m familiar. That there are places in the world where it is easier to slip though time, also, is not particular to Outlander, either. Those places are from tales long told and serve as inspiration for many stories of travel through time and different realms, like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and even A Darker Shade of Magic, to name just a couple. Also, the “thin places” in Breaking Time are not stones.

Anyhoo—on to the proper review of the book. Most notably, Breaking Time is a fantastically easy read. I made my way through it quickly enough to have it read in a couple of days with some interruptions. The book is published by Inkyard press, a Young Adult imprint of Harlequin, which is in turn an imprint of HarperCollins, so it’s not an indie. I’ve been reading a great many indie books lately, and I was interested to see what the big 5 traditional market has been putting out lately.

Klara, which is a version of the name Claire, our main character, starts the story in a separated state of grief over her mother’s recent death, and she maintains an inn with her father somewhere near Edinburgh, Scotland. I found her to be pretty relatable, for the most part, but she did need a bit of development for my taste. The story was pretty action-packed; there was a lot of stuff happening to Klara instead of Klara making stuff happen. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, just my preference. She suffers from self-doubt quite a bit and struggles through that in the story while she simultaneously tries to manage being the last Pillar of Time on the run from a very powerful bad guy trying to break time itself.

Our hunky, pit-fighting love interest (I’ve read about another fighter this month—in This Vicious Grace—those are getting pretty popular), Callum somehow (no spoilers!) manages to fall through time to meet up with Klara’s car, and from there, he and Klara seem to keep making their way back to each other for a good portion of the book. He’s pretty open-minded for a 500-year-old time transplant. I always like to see how authors make their characters interact with the new (or old) things in their new times. We get some of that in this book, but not as much as I would have liked. There are also some inconsistencies in the dialect; for example, sometimes Callum uses “ken” and sometimes he uses “know.” I think that should be fixed by the time the book releases, so I’m not too annoyed. It’s an advance copy.

The plot, overall, is pretty good. It’s quite linear, but there are mythological aspects of the older deities of Scotland incorporated into it, and I always love reading about that kind of stuff. As previously mentioned, the plot does have quite a bit of action, lots of fighting and battles, and a few of visits to places where the characters have to garner information in some calmer scenes. It’s not boring, but it is a bit formulaic. Someone who has read a lot of time travel stories or romances may feel a bit bored (or not, one never knows). The ending is a cliffhanger, though. The jury’s out for me whether or not I’ll read the next one. Let’s hope the comments about this being a ripoff of Outlander go ignored and people pick up the book and read it for themselves to make that determination. I don't think it is at all.

My thanks to NetGalley for the ARC, for which I willingly give my own, honest opinion.

#breakingtime #sashaalsberg #timetravelromance #inkyardpress #harlequin #harpercollins #lgbt #yaromance

A big thanks to NetGalley and Inkyard Press for gifting me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I don't think I know enough words to describe this book. In a not good way either. As it felt like a ripoff of Outlander, Which was a cool concept, but ended up being really bad execution.

Breaking Time by Sasha Alsberg, is a YA novel inspired by Scottish folklore, following the story of Klara as she nearly hits a man standing in the middle of the road with her car. The only problem is the man, Callum, claims he stepped out of another time. Throw in the fact that Klara is apparently an anchor point in the vast expanse of time, and Callum is fated to love-I mean protect her at all costs.

The writing was decent, but that's about all there was to it. The plot was lackluster and the characters just fell flat. I felt like it was just piggybacking off the success of Zeneith, which was due to the author's popularity on YouTube.

I really wanted to like this more. I'm willing to give it another chance as the way it ended seems to indicate there's more to come. Klara and Callum have great chemistry, but the author had to spend so much time setting up their fictional world, that the events with Llaw seemed so rushed when Samhain came around. It's rather difficult to comp this with Outlander. This is a teen title whereas Outlander is fiction. It's a much shorter book than Outlander as well. I didn't get a lot of time to get to know Klara and Callum besides the basics, which were repeated over and over. The ending got me and that's what is keeping my curiosity. However, the author really needs to explain and build the world with more detail instead of relying on readers to fill in details or remain out of the loop.

Breaking Time is a wonderful first book of time a travel/folklore/romance series!

I really liked how Klara wasn’t condescending towards Callum about her time, she was patient and didn’t put him down when he was surprised or confused by the modern time.

Callum was a precious cinnamon roll of a character as well as a product of his time. He was used to the role he played in his time but he was never controlling just because “he was a man” as men in his time were.

I loved the folklore, it makes me want to read up on Scottish folklore!

I love that the storyline is that Callum accidentally time travelled when trying so save his friend and in the process meets someone who he later finds out that his friend has seen her before. He is the unlikely hero, or so he thought.
I love that Klara is a strong character and won the first battle herself.
The cliffhanger! I really want the next book to see what happens!

Well done Sasha!

Klara thought she had hit Callum with her car, not realizing he had fallen into her time. So begins their journey to find the dark force that wants to kill Klara.
It’s kinda a light romantic time travel story. I love time travel books and I really enjoyed this one. The only thing wrong is it ended in a cliffhanger and now I have to wait to find out what happens.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the early copy

This book was a DNF (did not finish), it failed to keep my attention and I couldn't really connect to the story so I stopped reading after the first 50 pages.

Sasha is an amazing writer and I can see how much work, and studying she did to perfect this book. I love her writing, so I was so excited to read this book! This book captured my attention very quickly and kept me wanting to read. At some points, I felt the story slowed or got kinda slushy and needed some more work.. but overall this book is thought through and carefully written. I can see certain aspects of her life echoed in this book and it made me feel closer to her. I am so proud of Sasha and look forward to reading the rest of the series !!!

This book had an interesting catch to it with time travel, however one of the hardest things to write well is time travel and to keep it sensible. The characters were decent enough, the writing was fine, and the process of the book was pretty good. I just didn't want to hurry back and keep reading. It was more of a struggle to keep invested and the writing didn't pull me back in or keep me invested to want to keep reading. The book was fine enough, the cover art was good, but overall the book was just an ok read for me, and not something I would recommend to others.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

I wanted to give Sadha a chance but this book was not it. The characters were very flat and the magic system also very confusing. It almost felt like there was too much downtime in this story and I needed more action or something to push the story.

Book: Breaking Time
Author: Sasha Alsberg
Rating: 4 Out of 5 Stars

I would like to thank the publisher, Inkyard Press, for providing me with an ARC.

I know that Sasha is not the most popular writer out there and that a lot of people don’t like her writing style. I get it. I do think your points are valid. However, like with Zenith, I did have a great time with this one. I think I picked it up at the right time. It’s an Outlander fanfiction and it’s just fun. That’s what it is. It just a fun read full of twists and turns with an ending that makes me want a second book and a second book soon. With Sasha’s writing, you almost have to suspend your disbelief and go with the story that she is telling. Once you get past that, you will have a great time with the adventures that she tells.

One thing that I did really bother me was the use of the Scottish words. I understand that this book does take place in Soctland and that one of our main characters is Scottish. However, the use of the Scottish words made is seem like Sasha was trying too hard to remind us that the story does take place in Scotland. I get that she wanted to make this a true Scottish experience, but it just didn’t feel natural. Plus, I thought some of the words were used innocently. You can also tell that she did put in a lot of time and research into this book. She does know her Scottish history and major local landmarks. She did put effort in order to make this book feel like you are in Scotland with the characters. You can tell that she did listen to what people were saying about Zenith and did improve.

I really enjoyed Klara and Callum were great leads. At first, it kind of seemed like they were going to be rip offs of the Outlander characters. As the book when on, we start to see them take on their own voice. Now, I personally enjoyed Klara’s point of view more than Callum’s. I thought that Klara was a lot more relatable than Callum. We get to see Klara as she discovers herself and see her take the path that she wants to-not what others want her to do. We see her struggle and grieve with the lose of her mother and how she and her father are barely hanging up. We see some very real human emotions. Now, knowing Sasha’s story, this is very personal to her. The way that she poured all of these emotions into Klara is who it’s done. In order to write a great book, you have to make your characters feel human. Sasha has done so with Klara. Had we not had all of this little human moments, I really don’t think I would have latched onto Klara the way that I did.

Overall, I thought that this was much better done than Zenith. Now, I did like the adventure a little bit more in Zenith, but if we are talking about writing improvements, then it is better.

This book comes out on June 14, 2022.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/ZSN9nqS292o

This felt like reading a video game. The cause and effect was just too linear, and there were too many coincidences to be believable or mysterious. Overall it felt like a first or second draft; the writing was unpolished.

After the death of her mother, Klara moves with her father to Scotland into an old family manor. While driving one day, she finds man in the middle of the road, only he's not lost or confused, he's time-traveled from 500 years in the past.

I saw a few comparisons of "Breaking Time" to the Outlander series, but there are a few things that definitely set this book apart. First of all, this story takes place in 2022, not in the past, and secondly, there are paranormal and mythology elements that are unique to "Breaking Time". I enjoyed seeing time traveling where one of the main characters was dropped in today's world for once, similar to the movie Kate and Leopold.

Being that this is the first novel in what looks to be a duology or a series, I'm not surprised at the amount of information and hopping around Scotland that all takes place in such a short time. This book feels more like it's setting the scene for bigger things to come than trying to tell the entire story itself, much like the first Harry Potter book did.

It had a few confusing moments where I did have to backtrack to make sure I understood what was happening, but all in all I did enjoy it.

While the book shares some similarities with the Outlander series–Scotland, time-traveling, time-displacement, and star-crossed romance–Alsberg introduces an element of fae magic that separates this story from others. We don’t just get time-traveling here; we get travel between other worlds along with an impending battle that will either save or destroy all of the worlds. Feels like a typical sci-fi trope with a dash of fairy dust; and yet I felt that once I got past the Outlander-ish stuff, it became a story all its own focused on finding one’s own path rather than blindly accepting the one destiny has chosen.

I want to cry! I wanted to love this book so very much because I am a huge outlander fan and it gave me MAJOR outlander vibes when I read the synopsis.

The execution however did not keep my interest. I did manage to trudge my way to the end but I could not tell you most of what I read because it upset me about how this was a complete knock off with different names and the writing didn't keep me intrigued.

I'm sure someone out there will love this book. It just was not for me.

This was a pretty cool take on Scottish folklore and time travel, although I wish it were more detailed, especially in the first half of the book. The overall storyline and plot were good, but I think more backstory and details regarding the characters initially would have helped to draw me in more. It really picks up in the second half of the book, and this is where I became quite intrigued with it. The epilogue was great, and I'm looking forward to reading what happens in the next book in the series (I'm assuming it's going to be a series?).

Klara and Callum had an interesting relationship. It was definitely a slow-burn kind of situation, with both of them questioning what place their feelings for each other had in the pandemonium of the situation surrounding them. I did enjoy Callum's POV in the book a bit more than Klara's, as I think it explained a bit more in depth about the turmoil Callum felt about his situation in time and the growing attraction towards Klara. I'm not sure where they'll go from the way this ended, but I want to find out. Overall a 3.5 star read for me.

This review will be posted on my Goodreads, StoryGraph, Instagram, and Twitter accounts (see links below) as of May 19th, 2022.

Great characters and story, although it did move very slowly. When it finally did get going it ended with a cliffhanger which was disappointing. Not sure I’ll check out the next one to find out what happens.