Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Ratings Explanation

Language:  Frequent mild obscenities (damn, hell, ass) as well as the “B” word.  Words like piss, screw, and sucks are also used.  Someone uses an “inappropriate finger gesture.”  Someone says, “sh_” before being cut off.

Violence:  There is an explosion and someone dies.  It is relived a couple times with different people dying.  Someone holds a gun on someone else to force compliance.  A cadaver is stolen.  Emerson’s parents die in a crash and she survives.  She has dreams of the crash.

Sexual Content:  There are some kisses.  Someone makes a comment about her “non-existent sex life”.

Adult Themes:  Underage drinking, betrayal, loss of parents.

Synopsis

Emerson knows she is different.   Not everyone can see ghosts from the past and make them pop by punching them.  It’s freaky.  After losing her parents in a crash, Emerson’s life turns inside out.  She is hospitalized for ghostly claims and becomes so depressed she can hardly see the way out.  But within Emerson lies an inner strength to fight against the darkness and make her way back to the light, and her brother, the only family she has left.

Thomas loves his sister and wants to protect and help her.  Michael is his newest attempt.  Michael works for a secret organization called Hourglass, a place devoted to helping people understand their unusual “gifts”.  Emerson decides that talking to Michael might be a good idea because her ghostly sightings are increasing and she doesn’t know how to handle it.

Michael seems to be the perfect person for Emerson to relate to.  He can also see ghosts and believes everything she tells him.  It doesn’t hurt that he’s also drop dead gorgeous.  The electricity between Michael and Emerson is literally palpable.  Emerson doesn’t understand the crazy connection the two of them share but she knows that Michael is someone she wants to trust and love.

Emerson begins to learn of a new world and a new way of life with Michael; a place where she feels normal and relaxed.  People with unusual gifts have a tendency to attract the wrong kind of people though, people who would exploit those gifts for power and money.  Emerson finds herself thrown into a complex problem that requires traveling to prevent a death that never should have happened.  It’s risky, even deadly.  The consequences of failure could change Emerson’s past as well as her future.

Hourglass is a well written, engaging story combining the paranormal world with time travel.  The pages just flew by.  I really enjoyed the relationship between Emerson and her brother.  I appreciated the way he trusted her and believed what she told him.  He was a guardian as well as a supporter.  He was the true feeling of family to me.  The whole concept of time travel always makes my head whirl and so my head did plenty of that in this book.  The book ended way too soon for me and definitely left the door wide open for a sequel.  This is a YA book, I’d recommend the upper end of that reading spectrum.