Nick Davenant had far too much past

It's been almost 2 months since I read Bee Ridgway's The River of No Return and I really shouldn't let that much time go between reading and reviewing. Whoops. Not that I didn't have a good excuse, cos I did. It's more I shouldn't let that much time go because then I forgot things about the book which may not make for the most helpful review.

I've had this book on my radar for awhile now, ever since Alice, Megs, Raych, and Rayna all had excellent things to say about it. So naturally it took me like 6 months to pick it up because I'm a brat like that.

Nicholas Falcott is a Marquess in London circa 1815 when those were a thing, until he's almost killed on a battlefield and flung forward in time. Which is convenient when the other options is "be killed" so that worked out nicely. He's met by a group called The Guild (that's not ominous or anything) who picks up these people who jump forward in time, because this is a thing that happens. They tell him they'll help him out, give him money and all he has to do is uphold Guild rules:

There Is No Return.
There Is No Return.
Tell No One.
Uphold the Rules.

He adapts to the future and things are going well until the Guild shows up and SURPRISE those first two rules about how you can never go back or more like guidelines and you can totally go back and no only that but Nick, you have to go back.

There's another group called the Ofan that want to do...something with time-travel that the Guild is not a fan of and there's a problem in the future with time doubling back on itself and other ominous time-travel, world-destroying stuff and Nick needs to seduce Ofan people and figure out what they're up to so the future can be saved. This does involve some awkward moments as he explains to his family where he's been for the past few years. (Amnesia in Spain. Obviously.)

It works out nicely that back in the past is a woman named Julia Percy. Her grandfather had a way with time travel but he's gone and now there's just her evil cousin who is busy being evil. In between trying to figure out what the Ofan is up to, what the true intentions of the Guild are, and saving the future, Julia and Nick have plenty of sexytimes.

There's nothing BAD about this book. The characters are well-drawn, it's an interesting time travel story, it's well-written. But overall I was sort of...eh on the book. There's nothing to dislike about it and I certainly don't regret reading it. I may even pick up the sequel considering this book ends on a cliff-hanger and if I want to know what happens with pretty much anything, I'm going to need to read the next book. But I was expecting to looooooooove this book and unfortunately I did not. I liked it. It entertained me at the time. And I mostly forgot about it once I put the book down.

BUT, if this sounds like your type of thing, you should check out those other review.s You should probably check out those reviews anyway because they are very good and funny and yeah.

GIF rating:

Title quote from page 10, location 192

Ridgway, Bee. The River of No Return. Plume, 2013. Kindle