Timeless and Timekeeper by Alexandra Monir

Timeless and Timekeeper are two books that tell the story of Michelle Windsor, a teen who discovers that she has the ability to travel through time. The first book, Timeless, is when Michelle discovers her ability while the second book, Timekeeper, reveals a sinister plot to take everything away from her.

It all begins after Michelle's mother dies and she's reunited with her grandparents that she's never known about. Within her mother's belongings, she discovers a mysterious key. When she holds the key and the diary of her one ancestor, she finds herself suddenly transported in time to that of her ancestor. In this new time, she discovers that only certain people can see her, including a young man named Phillip. She and Phillip for an instant connection, but the fact that she's from a completely different time and can't control her time travels puts a huge damper on their relationship. Worried that their unattainable romance might destroy Phillip, Michelle races against time to make things right.

In Timekeeper, Michelle's world shifts when a new boys appears in school looking exactly like Phillip from the past - he even has the same name and signet ring. If he is the Phillip she'd fallen in love with, why doesn't he remember her? Helping Phillip remember their connection, though, is only half of her battle as she discovers that a woman from her father's past (Rebecca) is determined to destroy her. She now has seven days to make sense of her time traveling abilities and figure out how to stop Rebecca. 

In the realm of sequels, sometimes you can get away without reading the first book. In some ways you can with this book, but things will make a lot more sense if you read the first book. Personally I thought Timeless was a stronger book than Timekeeper. Given that both books are about time travel, there is a lot of shifting between the years. The first novel does a better job of making the timeline clear. There were a number of times in the second book that I became confused about which time and what happened in this time. There were characters overlapping because she's visiting Phillip but sometimes he young and then he's an adult but there's also her father and he's around at the same time as Phillip. Years might be mentioned and I couldn't figure out who was at what age at what point in that year. At times it made my head hurt. I almost wanted an actual time line of the character's past to visually see it all work out. But that might just have been me. The second novel also spent a ton of time explaining the logistics of time traveling, all of the rules and explanations as to how this happened. This is another thing that became very confusing, but again I might have just grown too frustrated to put in the brainpower to sort through it all. Both novels have a good plot, but I felt something was lost in the second book that didn't make it as enjoyable as the first novel.

If you're looking for a romance that is not by-the-books but doesn't involve paranormal crossovers (vampires, zombies, etc) this book is worth a shot. The author cares about the history she's recreating and thoroughly researched each era to vividly describe the past. So if you'd like a little taste of history without being stuck in the past, give these books a shot.
MMK