Timekeeper | Review

"I would have kissed you if you were a girl, I would have kissed you if you were purple."

Timekeeper at its heart is a desperate romance, with themes of selfishness and guilt. I wish I could have turned my critique brain off and enjoy the lore of this world, and fluffy romance but unfortunately I could not and found bumps all along my way. Never really getting a chance to enjoy much in this book.

The initial draw of this book is the alternate Victorian London setting where clock towers power time around cities. These clock towers have mechanics, who are born with the ability to feel the flow of time and get jobs to maintain the clocks. The main character we follow is Danny, who is one such mechanic.
In my opinion Danny is a quite unlikable protagonist. He wasn’t entirely charming or interesting. We are constantly being told that he as a prodigy among mechanics, one of the youngest, but we don’t see why, almost ever. One of the main goals of Dannys is to get assigned to work on a new clock that is being built. But no one can figure out how to get it to work. For some reason, Danny thinks he can figure it out (we’ll get to why he feels so strongly in a moment).
He wants it so bad, even though we as the reader haven’t been told anything that would indicate he has anything to bring to the table they don’t already have. And he comes off so entitled, leading him to do desperate things that screw other people over. (and its not just about this tower.)

So lets get to one of the biggest issues that drag most of the book down: Danny's trauma.

When the book first starts we learn very early on that he has just returned from a leave of absence after being in an explosion at a clock tower. He is traumatized by this and we see him try to return to work with some difficulty. We also learn that 3 years ago the town his father was at “Stopped” which means the whole town in suspended in time. (this why they are building that new clock tower)
I really feel like the author did not handle these two traumas well. Neither of them really got the attention or care they needed, fighting for attention instead of co existing. Considering this book is pretty long with not a lot happening (the plot really wanders) I think it could have been better implemented if we started with just the father back story having already happened, and we actually experience the bombing with Danny. That way we see his trauma with his missing father, and can experience the explosion.

What makes these pots seem unsatisfactory is mostly because this novel focuses on the romance, instead of the goal. I wish I could have been on board with this relationship, but there were way too many red flags and it came off toxic to me. Im actually surprised no one has brought it up yet. It might just be because Ive experienced it personally. This is probably spoilers, so I will mark it as such:

Colton and Danny are in a self-harm attention relationship. Colton harms himself to get Danny to come see him and give him attention. This can also hurt the town. Theres even hints of suicide, as we think one spirit may have destroyed her whole town out of sadness (ending her life bc she couldn’t be with the one she loved)

Danny tells Colton he shouldn’t do this, but even THEN Colton still does this, AND Danny is constantly thinking the whole time if he doesn’t go see Colton, he doesn’t know what he will do. This lasts the entire book, even at the last page we learn Danny went to go see Colton because he damaged himself again. And once AGAIN Danny tells Colton not to do that to himself or endanger the town. Im actually baffled that this has seemingly gone unnoticed in reviews and I don’t think the author realized this in her relationship because she made no attempt to make a message out of it.

As much as I don’t want to compare, I feel like I would be a hypocrite after my years of Twilight judgment not to point out the similarities.
Colton Is far older (timeless) but looks the same age as MC
Him and his people look strikingly different than humans (more beautiful) and look better as they feed off their source (time compared to blood)
Too much “excitement” leads to Colton losing control and bad things happening.
And then just the general toxicity. (its very small but at one point Colton even gets very jealous of Danny and acts out. Which is…always healthy. They clear a lot of things up by the end, like what it means to be human and their restrictions and such. In general it’s a WAY better relationship than Twilight, I just thought the similarities were funny.
I think their connection is interesting, like when Colton talked about how short humans lives are and what hes lived to see. I just dont think the romance should have started so fast. I think they should have made a harder point to the first kiss and just have it as Coltons naivety toward fairy tales, and just thinks a kiss is a reward, which was what he was giving Danny. But overall it was hard for me to get on board with the relationship.

Most of these issues with backstory all come to a head at the mid point climax. Which of course is spoilery:
But the moment leading up to Lucas’ death and the destruction of the Maldon tower has a lot of distraction and disjointed moments.
First off the only thing we know about Lucas is hes a bully. Randomly in the middle of the chapter we change to his perspective, which is the first time we get anyone elses perspective. Once he dies, we go to a scene of Danny being yelled at by Lucas’ girlfriend who (understandably) yells if hes “happy now” because Danny wanted to go where Lucas was, so it could have been Danny instead. But then also brought up how Danny punched Lucas, as if that’s relevant at that time? (plus she was there when he was bullying Danny and deserved the punch)
So then Danny is seen throwing up and getting sick (assumedly from the trauma of his own accident) and then he goes to the hospital and just starts blaming other people for the accident sounding like a crazy person, and then hes crying and punching walls, and its at that moment I'm like “oh yeah, that was also the tower that should have saved your dad.” Its this big moment where it should have built up all this tension and all his trauma came crashing together but instead it was just a huge mess. Because it was distracting, and the story up until that point lacked sufficient focus on those issues.

We’re almost done, we come to the conclusion. I was hoping the story was going to get better, the mystery was finally amping up, but once again, it just came off as a fail to me.

But the ending comes in, and it really just turned into a big battle of love and a lot of it I just didn’t get on board with. The main antagonist came off as ridiculous and I couldn't sympathize at all because of the way the plot was built up.
The best thing about it is that when the resolution finally came around (which most reviews counted it as a negative) I just didn’t care and was fine with it. It just seems more like a mystery that is being set up for future books.

Theres a few more things that didn’t fit smoothly into my review I wanted to point out here:
For most of the novel I didn’t care how the mother and son relationship went, but the later half it got better after a particularly cute moment involving gingerbread.

I personally liked some moments with Daphne, she had a really cool perspective. In my opinion I think it should have started the book, would have worked wonderfully as one of those prologues where we see a glimpse at what will happen.

There are little stories in between stories that shed some light on the lore, I liked those. (I still wouldn’t praise the book as having a lot of lore, its still very surface level.)

Lastly is Cassie. I really liked her character and her support. I think her backstory was compelling. And as a spoiler, let me just say:
I like the seatbelt thing, I could tell it would come back. I just think it would have better implemented if, lets say Mathias and Danny raced to Enfield and got in an accident but Danny came out the better for it because of the seat belt. Missed opportunity.