Book Review: The Dream Keeper's Daughter by Emily Colin

Pages: 480

Genre: Adult Historical Fiction/Science Fiction

Pub. Date: July 25, 2017

Publisher: Ballantine

Source: Publisher for review

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Goodreads says, "An archaeologist discovers her presumed-missing boyfriend is trapped more than a hundred years in the past—a love story that transcends time and place, from the author of the New York Times bestseller The Memory Thief. Eight years after the unsolved disappearance of her boyfriend Max Adair, archaeologist Isabel Griffin has managed to move on and rebuild her life with her young daughter, Finn, her last tie to Max. But after a series of strange incidents, Isabel begins to wonder if Max might still be alive somewhere, trying to communicate with her. She has no idea that the where isn’t the problem—it’s the when. Max has slipped through time and place, landing on his ancestral family plantation in 1816 Barbados, on the eve of a historic slave uprising. As Isabel searches for answers, Max must figure out not only how to survive the violence to come, but how to get back to his own century, the woman he loves, and the daughter he has only ever met in his dreams."

It's present day South Carolina and Isabel Griffin is an archeologist as well as as a single mom to her daughter, Finn.  Without her best friend, Ryan, and her father's support, she would truly be lost. She can't even rely on her mother as she vanished many years ago.  Her former-fiance, Max, is also the father of Finn and very similarly to her mother, he went missing many years ago; at this point, she assumes he is dead.  That is until strange things start happening. Finn starts talking about seeing her dad and even Isabel is having strange dreams about him. The dreams are realistic and they are setting her back as she has really built herself a new life as a professor at the College of Charleston and is hoping to move forward.  While on a dig in Barbados, she discovers something that simply shouldn't be there and to top it off, there's a strange phone call.  This all leads Isabel to wondering if Max is really dead? Could he still be alive? The narrative switches from Max's point of view back to Isabel's, so readers get a full story. The Dream Keeper's Daughter by Emily Colin is an entertaining "historical beach read" that fans of time travel, mysteries, and romance will enjoy.

I really enjoyed the unconventional character of Isabel in The Dream Keeper's Daughter. She's tough, she's an archeologist, she's good-looking; in fact, she's seems to be a female version of Indiana Jones. I enjoyed her relationship with her daughter, Finn, as well as her best friend, Ryan. Although I felt like Ryan was a little to good to be true sometimes, I still appreciated their friendship, which seemed to be turning into something more as the story progressed.

Enter Max. I really liked his back story in The Dream Keeper's Daughter and readers find out he is trapped at his ancestral plantation in the early 1800s on the island of Barbados. The problem is that it's the time right before a really horrific slave revolt. He just wants to get back to Isabel and start their future, but how much time has passed by since he somehow slipped back to the 1800s?

The setting of Barbados was very memorable in The Dream Keeper's Daughter. I thought Colin did a great job bringing it to life and what life must have been like on a plantation with slaves.  Colin also did a good job keeping us on the edge of our seats, especially with the events surrounding the slave revolt.  Then she would bring us right back to present day with Isabel, so it was a nice juxtaposition.

While I had to suspend my disbelief a few times while reading The Dream Keeper's Daughter, that didn't stop my overall enjoyment of the novel. It was a fun summertime read that had a little bit of everything: time travel, historical details, romance, action as well as a mystery.