Kristin Hannah, known for women’s fiction, disappoints with a lackluster time travel romance in When Lightning Strikes, which unfolds slowly over its 400-page length.
Rating:
Published: 1994
Illustrator: James Griffin
Published by: Fawcett
Genres: Historical Romance, Western Romance, Paranormal Romance, Time Travel Romance
Format: Paperback
Buy on: Amazon
Reviewed by: IntrovertReader
The Book
Kristin Hannah is a successful author of women’s fiction. It’s fortunate that she found success in that genre because the romantic novels I’ve encountered from her are, sadly, lacking in excitement. When Lightning Strikes is a time travel romance that starts off promisingly but takes a boring turn and becomes a bit tedious with its drawn-out plot.
This should have been a category-length romance of 190 pages, not 400 pages long!
The Plot
The setup of When Lightning Strikes is rather intriguing. Alaina Costanza is a single mother and a romance writer living in the present day. Or whenever Geraldo Rivera had a daytime talk show. Maybe the “modern era” would be more appropriate.
Our main character is a writer who has no life but her daughter. Now that her daughter is away at a summer camp, she’s got nothing to do but pop pills and drink herself silly.
It has a dark setup, but it is appropriate for this emotionally overwrought book.
One night, while typing at her computer, lightning strikes, and ZAP! Alaina wakes up in totally new surroundings. She’s traveled back in time, not to the real Old West, but inside her romance novel!
So, if she’s in her created world, where is the hero? It turns out he’s an utter douchebag. In actuality, the villain of Alaina’s book is the hero of this one.
The entirety of When Lightning Strikes is about Alaina getting kidnapped by the bad guy known only as Killian. They spend their time trying to outrun the “hero” who’s out to kill him. Alaina wants to get back home to her daughter. Still, she has a connection to Killian and finds herself fighting her feelings for him.
Fate has thrown them together for a reason. This would be fine if the book didn’t go on forever and blather about what soul mates were here. There’s even a clichéd magic woman of color who has mystical insights into the heroine’s destiny and relationship with Killian.
The narrative dies down in favor of navel-gazing and droning on about how Killian and Alaina are meant to be for chapters on end.
Will Killian meet his end at the hands of the hero? Will Alaina stay in the past with Killian or finally go home to be with her daughter? I didn’t care. But it all ends as happily as one can imagine.
Final Analysis of When Lightning Strikes
This could have been a decent book. Rather than being action-based and romance-based, it was bogged down by internal angst. Chapters went by where nothing happened.
Finishing it was a chore. I’m sure Hannah has written better books, but I never want to go through another romance as dull as When Lightning Strikes.
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| Overall: | 1.3 |