Review: The Surviving Trace by Calia Read

Title: The Surviving Trace

Author: Calia Read

Series: (Untitled #1)

Release Date: May 21, 2018

Rating: 2 stars

SYNOPSIS

Our love is timeless. 

Will is my fiancé. The shy man I met years ago in college. The person I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with.

This is the life I’ve always wanted until finding a picture of four men changes everything…

Etienne says he’s my husband and the year is 1912. He can’t stand the sight of me, but I don’t know why.

Oh, and he’s one of the men from the picture.

I’ve done the impossible and have become trapped in time and I know Etienne is my key to going home.

The more time I spend with Etienne, the further I fall for him, until I’m questioning which time I belong in and if the life I left behind is the one I truly desire.

All I know for certain is I need to survive time.

I need to survive love.

And I need to make it out on the other side alive.

Contemporary Romance/Time Travel

Buy Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon AU 

REVIEW

The Surviving Trace by Calia Read
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Title: The Surviving Trace
Series: Surviving Time #1
Author: Calia Read
Release date: May 21, 2018
Cliffhanger: Yes

This is my first Calia Read book, and I was so excited for the opportunity to introduce myself to her work. I've heard a lot of great things about her previous titles, and already had a couple of them on my TBR. This story in particular had my name written all over it. Time travel, psychological elements and twists, time travel, a (mostly) 1912 setting, did I mention time travel? The prologue was an immediate hook, which led me to hope that this was going to be a big winner. Unfortunately I didn't end up falling in love with the story as I had anticipated. Originally I was going to rate it a three, but the more I thought about it, I had to face facts that in all honesty it was just okay for me.

My two star rating was a struggle, because the writing style is just the kind that I love to read the most. I loved the author's way with words. There were quite a few highlighted quotes like this that were beautifully woven into the story:

    I more than loved her. She’s a religion, and I’m a believer. For the rest of my life, I’ll worship every single part of her.

It was the technical issues in the storyline itself that caused my inability to fall in love. There were way too many questions unanswered, and unsatisfactory explanations. Plus, character behaviors were not plausible at some points, which led me to feel disconnected from the romance.

Here's some background:
Serene is happily engaged to Will. They get along fabulously, she owns an antique store with her good friend that allows her to make a living off of what she's passionate about: history. One day, her business partner finds an old photograph of four men that she can't seem to take her eyes off of or stop thinking about. She feels an odd connection to these mysterious men, in this captured moment that is long passed, and she's consumed with questions about their identity and stories. Standing by the fireplace in her apartment that she lives in with Will, she suddenly feels herself inexplicably slipping to another time and place.

It's 1912 in Charleston, South Carolina, and she's standing in the middle of a party in the Belgrave Plantation. People are greeting her by her name, and then her husband arrives in a rampage, angry that she has once again ignored his wishes. Here's what we know: 1912 apparently has a woman with her name, her identical appearance, but opposite personality, different parents, different birthday, and of course...a completely different life.

    “I don’t know who this woman is,” I confess, my voice hollow. “We have the same body and name, but it all ends there.

Boy, was I ever intrigued. I needed to know how in the world this happened. Was she visiting a past life? (I shot that idea down because if that were the case, she wouldn't have the same name or appearance.) Is she crazy? Your mind immediately starts to calculate possible outcomes. I kept waiting for some kind of solid foundation, and honestly? That never happened. This was one of the most confusing things about the story, and yes, there is more to come in the series, but that needed to be explained. I understand that it's time travel and you have to suspend disbelief to a point, but it still needs to make sense.

After falling in love with "her husband" Étienne, she manages to make her way back home. Which brings me to my first big issue.

Serene googles Étienne, his wife Serene, and her "fake parents" (the parents of the 1912 Serene). Not only is there no record of either parent, but now 1912 Serene has the heroine's birthday. She concludes to herself that she's changed history. If I'm reading this right, this is implying that the other Serene has been wiped out of existence. SHE is now the Serene that belongs there. Same birthday, right? Here's my problem with believing that. If that's the case, why does Étienne remember BOTH versions of her after she time travels back home? If his real wife has been erased, that would mean that he has no memory of this other person.

Not only that, but we are never given an explanation as to where his real wife goes when the heroine arrives there. Old Serene just disappeared into thin air, never to return? Étienne ruminates broodingly that he must come up with an explanation as to where Serene went, because he's not sure if either Serene will ever return. This was a huge part of the plot, and none of it was adding up for me.

Then we come to the cheating. And yes, there was cheating here, I don't see it as a technicality at all. Not only was the heroine engaged to a good man in her own time, but Étienne is clearly married. And let me emphasize this: He is not married to HER. Just because she has the same name, and looks like her, doesn't make them husband in wife in reality. They are not the same person. I'm not a fan of cheating, but I can see that everything is not black and white. I actually didn't care in the slightest that Étienne was being unfaithful to his wife. They had an arranged marriage, and didn't try to hide the fact that they slept with other people. They never should have gotten married in the first place. However, in her case, she was in a committed loving relationship.

It's one thing to say that, hey, I'm trapped in another time, I don't know how or if I'll ever return home. If that's her mentality, you can kind of excuse it. But no, even as she sleeps with the hero, she never once decides that she wants to stay there. The whole time she's focused on making her way back to her own time. The day after they sleep together, she KNOWS what they did was wrong, and tells him that it was a mistake that they can never repeat.

    I don’t regret anything about last night. What I wanted to talk to you about is the fact that it can never happen again.” “Why not?” “I have a fiancé.”Étienne crosses his arms. “But you’re having sex with a man you’re married to. Correct me if I’m wrong, but a husband overrides fiancé, yes?” Challenging his logic is hard. “Yes. Even so, I’ll know the truth.”

Am I the only one that sees that his "logic" is a flimsy excuse that even she doesn't genuinely agree with? Of course, immediately after this conversation, they sleep together again. What is poor Will's crime that causes her to excuse her infidelity so flippantly?

    My time with Étienne is making me realize that everything I thought about love—the bliss, the perfect contentment—is false.

So...Will is too perfect? Too easy? Again, this is not doing it for me to make me feel like these two were meant to be. The way she broke things off with him didn't make any sense to me either.

When she returns home, she realizes that nothing is the same for her, and she needs to be honest about her feelings with Will. She decides to tell him about traveling back in time, fully expecting that he's going to trust and believe her insanely crazy sounding story. When (naturally) he starts to worry that she's having a mental breakdown, he calls her family out of worry for her. What anyone would do for someone they love. She turns blame onto him for reacting that way, and dismisses their relationship, and her guilt.

    A small part of me understands why Will called my brothers and that he’s coming from a place of love and concern. But a bigger part feels betrayed. It’s as if he took all the trust that had been built between us throughout the years and crushed it with one hand. I have a feeling that when I walk out of the front door, I’ll also be walking away from Will.

How IN THE WORLD did HE betray HER? He did absolutely nothing wrong. If anything, she is the one who betrayed in their relationship. I'm not going to lie, this resolution to her inconvenient engagement was very frustrating. But that brings me to another related point. In comparison, when she was stuck in the past, and she decides to use her knowledge of the sinking of the Titanic in order to prove that she's from the future, that was another thing that really didn't make sense to me.

This is actually a good way for her to prove herself, since she knew very specific facts about the disaster that contradicted what the newspapers were originally reporting. However, when she insists to Etienne that the newspapers are wrong, and spouts off a bunch of facts to him about what happened...he suddenly automatically believes her. Wouldn't it make more sense if he believed her after what she was saying was proved to be right? Just because she's giving him this story and says that it's all true....that means it's true? Crazy people say things all the time with confidence, but normal people need evidence to believe a story like hers.
The last thing I need to mention is the hero's American southern accent. The way that it's presented is very typical. For example, words like walking, talking, sleeping are pronounced like walkin' talkin' sleepin'. A letter dropped at the end of words. The book is told in from the heroine's 1st person POV for almost the entirety. But there were a few chapters that were from Étienne's 1st person POV. What I found strange was that in his chapters, his inner dialogue/narration was told with absolutely no accent. This was awkward and unnatural, and it took me completely outside of the storytelling. How is it that somebody can talk and think in two completely different ways?

Based on all of the reviews I've read so far, my opinion is very much in the minority, and the complete opposite of the consensus of the plot accuracy. If you loved the book, and disagree with me, more power to you! For me personally, the vague surface explanations we were given here are enough to leave me wanting more. I love the time travel trope, the excitement of trying to unravel the plot, and the lovely period setting, but for me the series ends here.

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