I was honestly expecting to fall in love with this one, and am sad that I didn't. The premise sounded fun and promised quirky characters and lots of winks to the audience, and a visit to the author's website proved we had similar opinions about which parts of history are the most fascinating. Though this book did have some great moments, the writing and pacing were uneven throughout, with little to no plot or promise of one for the first 100 pages or so. Normally I love a slow burn, but for that to work there has to be at least a spark, and there just wasn't. Apart from Max, most of the characters lack real characterization, and for a time travel novel about historians there is remarkably little history.

Long periods of time would pass in the novel, but it was never clear how much, so that I was constantly surprised characters had apparently known each other for years. Much of the tension in the novel also depended on the shocking and usually sexually aggressive behaviour of characters who hadn't appeared enough for the gimmick to genuinely work. The result was that most of the secondary cast (and even Max herself) often came off as melodramatic teenagers prone to sudden, sometimes oddly violent, mood swings. Rather than reminding me of any actual teenagers I've known though, it was strangely reminiscent of my friends' fanfictions when we were around that age.

This book definitely has an audience, and there were some moments that I genuinely found enjoyable, but I'm honestly not sure who to recommend this book to. There's not enough texture to any of the history for me to recommend it to history buffs or fans of the time travel sub-genre, and the characters weren't fleshed out or consistent enough for me to recommend it as a romance.