A TIME TRAVELER’S MASQUERADE: A McQuivey’s Costume Shop Romance (Proper Romance Time-Slip series), by Sian Ann Bessey, Shadow Mountain, April 1, 2025, Paperback, $17.99 (young adult, new adult, adult fiction)
A young woman is thrown back in time to 1605 England in A Time Traveler’s Masquerade, the first book in a new time-slip series by Sian Ann Bessey.
One moment, Isla Crawford is inside McQuivey’s Costume Shop trying on a Jacobean-style gown for the parliamentary Autumn Ball, and the next, she is standing in an unfamiliar garden, barefoot, coatless, and at the mercy of a fierce storm. Confused, she seeks refuge in a Tudor manor, where she discovers that she has inexplicably traveled back to 1605, mere weeks before the culmination of Guy Fawkes’s infamous Gunpowder Plot.
Simon Hartworth, Lord Bancroft, finds his orderly seventeenth-century life disrupted when a mysterious woman appears on his sister’s doorstep during a storm. Intrigued by the stranger’s quirks and bewildering speech, he feels compelled to protect her and heed her warnings about a fatal plot against Parliament. As Simon is drawn into Isla’s dangerous scheme to stop the evildoers, he can’t help but also feel drawn to her.
With seemingly no way to get back home, Isla uses her twenty-first-century knowledge of the past to try to thwart Guy Fawkes and his coconspirators without altering the course of history forever. She and Simon must race to unravel the threads of the treasonous plot even as they wonder how their hearts will navigate their deepening connection and the seemingly insurmountable four centuries that separate their lives. —Synopsis provided by Shadow Mountain
Set in the Jacobean (1603-1625), A Time Traveler’s Masquerade takes place during the reign of James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England, following the death of Queen Elizabeth I —think King James version of the bible. During this time, there was no equality between Catholics and Protestants in England.
Those circumstances are key to author Sian Ann Bessey’s plot. The entire story revolves around the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when Guy Fawkes and fellow Catholic conspirators attempted to blow up Parliament and assassinate James I of England.
The story unfolds from the alternating points of view of Isla and Simon. Both are likeable characters with warm personalities.
Bessey does a fine job balancing the time-slip elements, and the setup for the story is a good vehicle for a planned series.
My one quibble comes with language. Bessey makes Isla’s learning of 17th Century English, but only bits of conversation read that way. This makes the novel straightforward for readers, but feels a little off.
A Time Traveler’s Masquerade is part of Shadow Mountain’s Proper Romance line, which features romances with clean or “chaste” storylines. This, and the age of the main characters, makes it appropriate and accessible for upper young adults and older.
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