DNF Review: Return Once More

Title: Return Once More (The Historians #1)

Series: The Historians

Author: Trisha Leigh

Publisher: Bloomsbury Spark

Publication Date: October 20, 2015

Source: Publisher for Review
Add it to Goodreads

If you could learn the identity of your one true love—even though you will never meet— would you?

Years have passed since refugees from a ruined earth took to space, eventually settling a new system of planets. Science has not only made the leaps necessary to allow time travel, but the process engineered a strange side effect—predicting your one true love.

If you could save your one true love from an untimely death, would you be able to resist?

Sixteen-year-old Kaia Vespasian is an apprentice to the Historians—a group charged with using time travel to document the triumphs and failures of the past—and she can’t resist a peek at her long-dead soul mate in Ancient Egypt. Before she knows it, she’s broken every rule in the book, and the consequences of getting caught could destroy more than just her new romance.

Or would you have the strength to watch him die?

But when Kaia notices a fellow classmate snooping around in a time where he doesn’t belong, she suspects he has a secret of his own—and the conspiracy she uncovers could threaten the entire universe. If her experience has taught her anything, to changing history means facing the consequences. The Historians trained her to observe and record the past, but Kaia never guessed she might have to protect it— in a race across time to save her only chance at a future. 

My Review

I had really, really high expectations for Trisha Leigh's Return Once More. Just look at that synopsis. Fleeing Earth. A new planetary home. Terra forming new planets. Time Travel. A person's one true love. I've been in a science fiction and space mood, and Return Once More had a lot of the things that I've been reading and enjoying lately. Plus the book seems like a perfect combination that would keep readers on the edge of their seats all night. 

Unfortunately, Return Once More wasn't the right book for me, and I wasn't able to get past everything that was bothering me about the science fiction novel. I really can't pinpoint just one reason as to why I couldn't finish the first novel in The Historians series, but it didn't work for me for a few different reasons. 

First of all, I wasn't really a fan of Kaia's voice. It's a troubling experience to read a book when you don't like the narrator or the narration style. I just kept reading everything as very flat and monotone, like there was really no excitement to the life that Kaia's living, even though she's a time travel apprentice and has had some crazy things happen to members of her family. Secondly, I wasn't really buying into the story that was being presented. I felt like a lot more could have been explained by that point, and I was extremely frustrated that more and more questions were being posed to readers, but I wasn't getting any answers to some of the simpler ones that came first.

I gave reading Return Once More a good, old college try, but I just couldn't get into Kaia's story. I ended up abandoning this novel at 15%. Believe me... I wish I would have read more and enjoyed it, especially after really enjoying one of Trisha's New Adult short stories. I might try to give it another chance in the future, but for now, this one's going on my DNF shelf. 

Trisha Leigh is a product of the Midwest, which means it’s pop, not soda, garage sales, not tag sales, and you guys as opposed to y’all. Most of the time. She’s been writing seriously for five years now, and has published 4 young adult novels and 4 new adult novels (under her pen name Lyla Payne). Her favorite things, in no particular order, include: reading, Game of Thrones, Hershey’s kisses, reading, her dogs (Yoda and Jilly), summer, movies, reading, Jude Law, coffee, and rewatching WB series from the 90’s-00’s.

Her family is made up of farmers and/or almost rock stars from Iowa, people who numerous, loud, full of love, and the kind of people that make the world better. Trisha tries her best to honor them, and the lessons they’ve taught, through characters and stories—made up, of course, but true enough in their way.

Trisha is the author of THE LAST YEAR series and the WHITMAN UNIVERSITY books. She’s represented by Kathleen Rushall at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.