Waterfall by Lisa Tawn Bergren
Series: River of Time #1
ISBN: 9781434764331
My rating: ★★
Reviewed by: Lynsey
Synopsis:  
What do you do when your knight in shining armor lives, literally, in a different world?

Most American teenagers want a vacation in Italy, but the Betarrini sisters have spent every summer of their lives among the romantic hills with their archaelogist parents. Stuck among the rubble of the medieval castles in rural Tuscany, on yet another hot, dusty archaeological site, Gabi and Lia are bored out of their minds...until Gabi places her hand atop a handprint in an ancient tomb and finds herself in fourteenth-century Italy. And worse yet, in the middle of a fierce battle between knights of two opposing forces.

Suddenly Gabi's summer in Italy is much, much more interesting.

REVIEW

Bahahahaha!

Oy vey... What a thoroughly ridiculous and yet weirdly entertaining book. Plot holes the size of Gibralta. A Mary Sue of epic proportions who knows everything about everything including how to speak a defunct ancient Italian dialect flawlessly (Hey, what modern seventeen-year old can't? Perfectly reasonable if you ask me!). And who can sword fight, natch. Oh! And cure dying people with her vast medical knowledge (using 14th-century herbal remedies, of course)!

It was just a comedy of errors, really; one implausible thing after another, and that's not even including the time travel!

And yet, despite all that, I read it right to the end. More fool me, probably, but it was kinda funny and, like I said, bizarrely entertaining in an "I'm laughing at you, not with you"  sort of way.

Not sure if I'm carrying on despite the awful cliffhanger ploy at the end.

2 Stars ★★

P. S. RE: the synopsis. I don't think being back in time constitutes being "literally" in a different world.

That is all.