When fragile, sixteen-year-old Hope Walton loses her mom to an earthquake overseas, her secluded world crumbles. Agreeing to spend the summer in Scotland, Hope discovers that her mother was more than a brilliant academic, but also a member of a secret society of time travelers. Trapped in the twelfth century in the age of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hope has seventy-two hours to rescue her mother and get back to their own time. Along the way, her path collides with that of a mysterious boy who could be vital to her mission . . . or the key to Hope’s undoing. Addictive, romantic, and rich with historical detail, Into the Dim is an Outlander for teens. (Cover and synopsis from Goodreads.)

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish Into the Dim. I was really hoping to fall in love with it, and hoping that it would be a really cool time travel book that would remind me of Doctor Who. But that didn’t happen.


Certain aspects of Into the Dim reminded me of Ghost House and Compulsion, two other books that I DNFed. The writing was angsty, the main character was a brat who was forced to move RIGHT AWAY and who, when snooping in her aunt’s house, found something she didn’t understand and DEMANDED an explanation RIGHT AWAY. Her aunt was exhausted, and needed sleep, but NO. Hope HAS TO KNOW.


I didn’t like Hope, and I really didn’t like any of the other characters, with the exception of Mac, Moira, and Phoebe (but Phoebe was a bit too much like Alice from Twilight for me). I could also smell a love triangle from a mile away and it didn’t seem like a realistic one. Both possible love interests were annoying; one seemed super conceited and the other one was a total jerk.


I just really didn’t like the writing or the characters, and the plot seemed super forced and very cliched. I got to 25% (my usual DNF stopping point) and just couldn’t take it anymore. This was around 100 pages and Hope had just then been told about the time traveling, and that they were going to go back in time to find her mother. I understand that Hope as a character didn’t know what was going on, so she had to be told what was happening, but since readers already know all of this from the synopsis, it should have happened a lot quicker. And there were all these “reveals” that weren’t really reveals because, again, the readers already knew from the synopsis.


It really was a shame, though, because I thought the story sounded really interesting and I wanted to love it. I just wasn’t grabbed into the story and I had a lot of problems with the story which just made me not interested to go any further.