GALLIMORE

Author: Michelle Griep ISBN: 9781934912119 12/2008 HISTORICAL/TIME TRAVEL Publisher: BLACK LYON PUBLISHING
Time Period: 1314 England/present day

Jessica Neale’s faith is lost the day of her husband’s death, and with it, her belief in love. In a journey to find peace, she encounters a gentle, green-eyed stranger who leads her to the ruins of the medieval castle, Gallimore. On his way to battle, Colwyn Haukswyrth, knight of Gallimore, comes face to face with a storm the likes of which he’s never seen, and a woman in the midst of it who claims to live centuries in the future. The Lady Jessica of Neale is an irksome, provoking bit of woman to be sure. And she’s about to turn his beliefs on end. The product of a family rooted in pain and evil, Colwyn has focused on naught but himself—until Jessica. To a mysterious prophecy stitched on a tapestry, through the invasion of Gallimore itself, Colwyn and Jessica are bound together by a lesson in forgiveness and love—a bond that might be strong enough to survive the grave.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Michelle Griep sets her paranormal romance, GALLIMORE, in the English countryside a couple of hours outside of London, where Cole Hawksworth has directed American tourist, Jessica Neale, to meet him at the ruins of castle Gallimore. They met on a flight from the U.S. to the U.K.. He's a history professor at Cambridge, she's a widow sent on vacation by her family to finish grieving her husband so that she can rejoin the living. When Cole gets caught up in a family medical emergency, Jessica explores on her own. As the day ends, a nasty electrical storm sweeps through and Jessica crashes her car into a knight on her way out. When she and the knight awaken the next morning, Jessica finds that she's been hurled back in time to 1314. Can she make it back to her own time to her son?

Griep's plot is eerily similar to that of a Melanie George novella with a Scottish laird and an American woman grieving her parents, but the treatment is completely her own. Jessica finds herself at a whole, unburned castle and thinks she's stumbled on a tourist trap castle reenactment. She's actually at Gallimore in the past, and the knowledge she has of their time and future labels her as a witch. The wicked Earl (Sir Tarne) and his brother the knight (Sir Colwyn), believe that she is there as part of a prophecy. Jess is smart, brave, and compassionate, and more than anything when she realizes when and where she is, she just wants to go home. She and Colwyn come to rely on each other (especially in opposition to the evil Tarne), and when he's attacked by bandits on the road back to Gallimore from London, Jessica actually gives up a chance at freedom to nurse him back from death's door. When the world of yore crashes and Jessica returns to the present with cuts, bruises, and smelling like she spent months unbathed in a medieval castle, can Cole (descendant of Colwyn) help her heal her twice broken heart? Will he even believe her far-fetched tale of travel through time?

GALLIMORE is a wondrous tale of the power of love and the miracles wrought for two hearts grieving their losses. Readers who enjoy great battles of the sexes and strong women who fight for right and good, will love Michelle Griep's tale of love through history.

Susan Barton