GOD'S BLOOD, THIS BOOK WAS GOOD! it managed to lift me out of the reading slump that's been plaguing me for a fortnight! 

spark had one of my favourite tropes - switching places with someone in a different time/universe. after a neurological experiment goes wrong, jamie finds herself switching places with some conniving bitch named blanche during the reign of elizabeth i, and basically has to figure out a) how not to get thrown in the tower of london for treason, b) how to stop blanche from completely ruining her life back in the twenty-first century and c) how to stop this crazy body-switching. 

i really liked the characters and the main romance, it was very sweet and believable, and of course i loved the descriptions of queen elizabeth's court. 

definitely recommended!

Thank you to both Net Galley and Bold Strokes books for an advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. 

I loved London.  People there ate biscuits instead of cookies, had rows instead of arguments, and lived in flats instead of of apartments.  They also snogged instead of kissed, which just struck me as hysterical.  The air felt laden with history as centuries of other people’s breaths flowed into my lungs. After eight months here I still hadn’t tired of disembarking at random Tube stations to explore. My partner, Chris, never came with me, since she thought a journey without a clear destination made no sense.  Chris was everything I wasn’t— driven Type A, scientific, and crazy smart.

These are the first lines of chapter one of Catherine Friend's most recent lesbian book 'Spark'.  I love Catherine's writing.  She has several non-fiction books and even more children's books which  I'm sure are wonderful but the work's I read, the lesbian novels, are a small 5 in number.  One of my all time favorite books, and I'm talking favorite among all genres and authors,  I mean if my apartment was on fire and I could only grab a few precious items, Catherine's 'Spanish Pearl' and to just a tiny degree less, 'The Crown of Valencia' would be items I would grab to save from a fire.   I have read the Spanish Pearl at least 6 or 7 times and I enjoy it just as much each time I read it as I did the first time.

I mention the 'Spanish Pearl' here because 'Spark' reminds me of the former a little bit.  In The Spanish Pearl the main character Kate Vincent and her partner Anna visit Spain to adopt a little boy.  During a pause in the adoption process they separate to tour different places and Kate visits some famous caves and it is at these caves she falls back in time to the 11th century Spain.  All of Kate falls back in time in the Spanish Pearl. 

In Spark, our main character, Jamie Maddox, also travels back in time but it's only her mind and  consciousness that falls back in time into another woman's body, Blanche Nottingham, a lady- in- waiting for Queen Elizabeth 1 and Blanche is plotting a murder with 3 cohorts.  Blanche's consciousness meanwhile trades places with Jamie's and her mind enters Jamie's body.  

Jamie has been living in London for eight months when we first meet her. Her partner of ten years, Chris, is a neurobiology student at the University College London.  At  a lecture/exhibit about how the brain creates consciousness Jamie meets Chris's professor Dr Rajamani.  He asks her to participate in his study to locate consciousness by injecting a serum he calls GCA or glial cell activator and a slight electrical charge. Jamie agrees to participate in the experiment after a bothersome conversation with Chris.  Chris is a very ambitious person with great drive and  is unhappy that Jamie is content with life as it is and not wanting a greater purpose and yearning for the unattainable.  She sees Jamie as unambitious. A contented Jamie isn't enough for Chris. 

During the experiment Dr Rajamani puts several electrodes on her forehead and injects her with the GCA serum.  There is a thunderstorm raging outside and the machine the electrodes are attached to go crazy even though the machine is not yet turned on.  Jamie says she feels like she is full of static electricity and that  a current of electricity is coursing through her body.   A  loud thunderclap strikes and everything goes black for Jamie.  When her head clears she is wondering how she got from Dr. Rajamani's lab to an Elizabethan costume event. 

She is in the year 1560 at the palace of Queen Elizabeth 1 and the women are calling her Blanche and when she looks across the room and sees a woman with black hair and the same dress on she thinks the woman is wearing the same outfit as she but when the other woman moves a lock of hair at the same time as Jamie, Jamie realizes she is looking in a mirror and wearing someone else's  body.   The next thing she knows,  she is waking up in the twenty first century and is herself once again.  She thinks she has had a strange dream or is having hallucinations or going mad as her body swapping  life continues each time there are lightning and thunder storms. 

When Jamie is in Blanche's body Blanche is in Jamie's and Blanche likes the 21st century very much and wants to stay in the future.  Chris also prefers Blanche over Jamie and is hopeful that Blanche can stay in the future.

Jamie and Blanche battle for control of Jamie's body.

This is another great adventure we are taken on by this author and if you think you've read a story like this before you haven't because Catherine's skill at humor, adventure and details of the time period take you for a ride that will keep you turning the pages until you get to the end and wish you still had more pages to read.

I would still have to give the edge to The Spanish Pearl as Catherine's best lesbian adventure but because her writing is a cut above many other authors out there, it is  only a small fraction of difference in the quality of all her lesbian novels.  I definitely recommend this book and if this is your first time reading Catherine's work do yourself a favor and get all her other works but start with The Spanish Pearl.

I was unable to review this book because of a conflict in my schedule. Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused the publisher or the author of the work. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review for you and  I look forward to reviewing for you in the future.

Like another reviewer, I'm a little unsure of how to review this book. Time travel is one of my favorite fantasy/sci-fi tropes, and Catherine Friend is one of my favorite contemporary authors. Her previous time travel novels (Spanish Pearl and Crown of Valencia) are possibly my favorite in the genre, which means I came into this book with high expectations. Perhaps that is why the reading experience fell a bit flat for me.

The writing is excellent as usual (did I mention I love Ms. Friend's previous novels?), and the historical world-building is lovely and visceral. The pacing felt patient and deliberate, which I appreciate, and there was plenty of mystery to keep me interested in the storyline. Where I got hung up was the time travel phenomena--I'm all for willing suspension of disbelief, but the method the author employed to send the main character back in time felt far-fetched and clunky. I also agree with the reviewer who said that the girlfriend in the present was unsympathetic and borderline emotionally abusive. That made it harder for me to empathize with Jamie's decision-making, a plot point that directly impacts the time-travel narrative. 

Despite these issues, I did enjoy the novel. I just got booted out of the story more often than I normally do with Ms. Friend's work, which meant it took me considerably longer to read this book than her previous novels, most of which I binged over a few days max. If you haven't tried her Kate Vincent Adventures series, I highly recommend it.

I do not read time traveling / historical romances... Unless they are written by Catherine Friend. I became a fan of hers when I read Hit By a Farm and decided to explore her romance and devoured The Spanish Pearl.  This book, about a woman who signs up for an experiment on consciousness who wakes up in a different body during 16th century England, delivers everything that makes Friend's work unforgettable. Read it to find out how she tries to come back to her 21st century life.

Spark was certainly an interesting read. Part SciFi, Part Historical. Jamie Maddox is a really fun character. She taught me a new way to say a naughty word and not offend anyone. The story itself is mainly about some time travel from current day back to the Elizabethan era, which is something I've always been fascinated with. Catherine Friend is excellent in her detail that it makes you feel like you're there with Jamie as well. The romance is fairly thin and I wanted more, but it was more about Jamie's adventures in the past and her current issues in the present. This was a great read and I'd suggest it to everyone!

It took me only a day to read this book, the story is really captivating, the details of the elizabethan's age very accurate. The love story is very sweet

I would have loved to read more of Meg and Jamie when they finally get together in the 21st century and what would happen to Chris and Blanche? But anyway, I really liked the book, inresting plot, lovable main characters.

OMG! I LOVED THIS BOOK.

It was set in my home town and actually in my childhood neighborhood.  London is an awesome place and it was like I was there with Jamie. I would like to state at this point it was 2017 London I knew I'm not that old. I hear you saying yeah yeah :).

The basic story is that Jamie takes part in an experiment and she is pushed into it by her partner Chris who thinks she has no ambition.  Anyway during the experiment there is a thunder storm and she is transported back in time into the body of Queen Elizabeth 1 lady in waiting Blanche.  Now Jamie is stuck in 1560.  She meets Meg who has under gone the same experiment.  The problem is Blanche really likes 2017 and is going to anything to stay there. Even Chris prefers Blanche.

I gave it 5 stars and I'll admit the location had a lot to do with the extra star.  But the only down side I had was that the story stopped so suddenly. Yes Jamie and Meg made it back to present time and then the story ended.  I would loved to have read the clash of Jamie and (I hope now) her ex, as well as the budding romance between Jamie and Meg and being reunited with her family who Blanch managed to alienate in a big way.

This book would be a really good read if you love romance, with a bit of time travel and some historical fiction all tied up in a great package.  This is my first book by Friend. But wow her writing keeps you hooked. I literally couldn't put it down which isn't good because I forgot to sleep.  So yes I defiantly would recommend it.  Enjoy!


*ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley*

https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1YM4J1BOKH913/ref=pe_1572281_66412651_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2020877895

Catherine Friend's book The Spanish Pearl is one of my favorite lesbian novels so when I saw on NetGalley that there was a new time-traveling book coming out, I jumped on it. And I devoured it in one day.

Here's the blurb from Amazon: [removed]


Sounds pretty interesting, right? I thought so, too!

There were some similarities with The Spanish Pearl but once the book got going, the only real commonality was time-travel and being very entertaining. The POV stuck with Jamie Maddox (who, by the way, shares her name with another current Bold Strokes Books author) and through her we are given wonderful glimpses of Queen Elizabeth I, the intrigues of her court, and some pretty visceral descriptions of what life was like then. I laughed several times, cussed a few characters out, and truly had a great time while reading this book.

If you've read any of Catherine Friends work before and enjoyed it, I have no doubt you'll love this one. If you haven't read anything by the author, this is a good place to start. Oh, and see if you can catch Jamie's nod to The Spanish Pearl.

A big thanks to Bold Strokes Books and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review Spark. It certainly brightened my day. I'm still smiling.

I really enjoyed this book! I was a fan of Friend's other time traveling book The Spanish Pearl. When I heard she was writing another time traveling book, I was excited to get my hands on it. While it has been a while since I read The Spanish Pearl, I think this book was even better. It seems Friend keeps growing as a writer and excels in the time traveling category.

What if you and your girlfriend have hit a rough patch? She says you are not exciting and brave anymore. To prove her wrong, you agree to be a test subject for a doctors experiment that she is interested in. But something goes horribly wrong. Your mind and conciseness are transported into a women living in the 1500's. Not just any woman, but one of Queen Elizabeth's friends and ladies. And what if the women from the 1500's, is now living in your body, in your bed, with your girlfriend? What do you do?

I must admit, I just loved the premise and was hooked from the beginning. I started this late last night thinking I would read a few chapters, but I could not put this down. I stayed up into the early am having to finish this. I had to know what was going to happen next. I love books that grab me and have a ton of imagination, and this book fits that perfectly. You could also tell that Friend did a ton of research. She had the feel of Elizabeth's court down perfectly. I really felt like I was traveling back in the 1500's. While the idea of time traveling is out there. I thought this idea of just transporting ones conciseness back and forth, was really interesting. Better than just popping a whole person in the past.

I almost gave this book 5 Stars, I had just two small complaints. I'm going to keep this part a little vague not to give away any spoilers. The ending was just too abrupt for me. It is a happy ending, but it just ends, and I really wanted to know what would happen next. I needed at least another chapter or two. There is a certain character I really wanted to see the main Jamie have it out with. This character had it coming and I wanted that resolution. My other issue, I wanted a little more romantic time with the main couple. Again, this could have been put at the end of the book. This book was great, it just ended to damn soon.

If you are an adventure fan, a time traveling fan, or even a historic-fiction fan, this book is for you. This was a great read that hooked me and and would not let go. It is pretty easy for me to recommend. I think people that pick up this book, will be pleasantly surprised, what a great adventure it is.

An ARC was given to me by BSB, for a honest review.

Fire trucking amazing!
----

I just read the blurb now and I realized how much of the plot it reveals. I think a huge part of my enjoyment of the book rested in not knowing much about it other than it's a Catherine Friend and there's time travel. And in my mind, Catherine Friend + time travel = great adventure. As anyone can see from my rating, that formula still holds true. :)

Artist Jamie Maddox finds herself coerced by her long time girlfriend into volunteering for an unusual experiment in looking for and documenting the physical presence of "consciousness" inside her brain. An unfortunate confluence of factors sends her into the past, specifically, the year 1560 A.D. And not just anywhere, but into the court of the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth. Jamie realizes soon enough that she isn't bodily in the past, but only her consciousness has transferred. Upon awakening from the experiment, her initial reaction had been--Is she in some kind of elaborate movie production? With movie sets so realistic that they reek of sweat, unwashed bodies and putrid rivers? It seems much more logically just a recreation of her subconscious, Tudor-fascinated mind and she is simply in a coma. But is her knowledge of the Tudors that good and detailed that she can invent historical characters' faces, foods, smells, arcane words and even entire incidents, wholesale?

More disconcerting, the body isn't hers. She can't even eat without spilling food on her half-exposed breasts. Even worse, the person who owns it may not be a simple lady-in-waiting, but an ambitious, devious, scheming woman who may be involved in some nefarious plot that will mess up history as we know it.

Can Jamie get back to her time? Can she even get back to her own body? Does she even want to? Witnessing history in the making right beside England's most important ruler doesn't seem so bad. Ang the youthful Queen Elizabeth is such a fascinating woman.

It's a race against time, the weather, and a woman who's enjoying the future just a bit too much to give it up.

The book starts off a bit slow, with a mini-travelogue of London, both past and present. It's fascinating and all, but I couldn't wait to get on with the story. Once it does (and I finally got a sense of what's going on), I couldn't stop reading till the end. This is my new favorite Catherine Friend. I loved the The Spanish Pearl and its sequel The Crown of Valencia for their audacious plots, but this is just as intriguing, and much more fun and upbeat (although also frustrating!). And, I just found a whole new way to curse out loud without offending anyone. ;)

Other aspects I loved about the book:
- a glimpse into what the "real" 16th century London was like and not the romanticized versions we get from books and movies (The truth? it stinks!)
- a close-up and behind-the-scenes look at the newly-crowned Elizabeth, in turns wily and unsure and sometimes needing to seek validation, before she became the formidable Queen
- bits of arcane history/court politics--always more entertaining than the dry stuff we get in school
- a sweet romance that I wasn't even sure had started and simply had no idea how it would end, until much later(view spoiler))

Bottom line, get this if you love history, a bit of speculative fiction and great adventure. And the bonus of a sweet love story to boot.

Rating: 4.9 (Ah ratings, this is the part of the review that always gives me a headache. How do you rate a book you love more than other books, but isn't perfect? The extended travelogue could use some pruning. Comparing this against Spanish Pearl and sequel, both 5 starrers, I feel like I love this more, although I did read those two aeons ago so a re-read might actually reverse this. )

ARC from Netgalley and BSB

Elizabethan fantasy...engaging and educational. Wonderful combination of brain science, friendship, love, perseverance, thunderstorms, caring, and romance. The read had me thinking Avatar, Game of Thrones, and heavy clothing. So very different from a typical romance. In my opinion, that is a good thing! Fire trucking good!

Interesting concept, less than stellar execution.  The consciousness transferring, the hesitancy of the character to swear (f*** is essential to the English language for many reasons, the least of which is how well it rolls off of the tongue..."fire truck" does not) and inappropriate character judgments formed by a twentieth century mind in a sixteenth century body were all confounding qualities for me.  I wanted the Catherine Friend that wrote "The Crown of Valencia," not this odd hybridization of present and past.  Honestly, a significant number of the issues would have been obviated if time travel, specifically the physical transference of Jamie's character had occurred.  Yes, such work has been done in this genre and other heteronormative texts (most profoundly well by Diana Gabaldon), but I would have enjoyed it much more.  Jamie was just quirky enough to have had an absorbing journey to Elizabethan times.

I was reluctant about this book being of my liking. So far, almost all the historical themed books I've read have not been it and thus my reticence in front of this one. At the begining I have struggled to get into the plot, all this brain pictures and colors and serums had let me a little bit dizzy. But Jamie with her inocence and naivete and her high sense of loyalty have led me trough the backs and forths, making me root for her and efforts to make sense into her surrealist experience. Really Blanche and Claire are despicable and worth to each other. I am glad that the book do not show us their time together. So once I have finished it, I have a great sens of contentment not only by having read a good book but for the bits of history that also delivers.

I'm a bit conflicted with my star-assessment.  On the one hand, I have really enjoyed the novels of Catherine Friend in the past, The Spanish Pearl (also featuring time travel) was an excellent book with a riveting protagonist.  On the other hand, the operative words here were "in the past".  Her last several novels were just so so for me and seem to feature the same type of characters, along with what seems to be a reliance upon vaguely emotionally abusive relationships.  This particular novel features Jamie, a bland artist whose only notable feature is that instead of saying a certain 4-letter word, she replaces it with "fire truck".  It's not cute as much as it's distracting.  Time travel comes in thanks to some strange science experiment involving a mystery serum, bringing her back to Elizabethan times.  The descriptions of 1560 are vivid, with just the right amount of historical facts to really drive it home.  However, the pining for her (emotionally abusive, under-developed) girlfriend in the present were grating and unsympathetic, as were the ramblings that she was losing her mind and inventing the time traveling.  Parts of this book were very interesting and yet parts tended to drag, namely anything involving Jamie believing she's crazy, conversations with Elizabeth, murder plots that really don't go much of anywhere, every scene between Jamie and her girlfriend, etc.  Events just felt so cliched.  Naturally, Jamie views 1560 through the eyes of a modern-age woman and tends to look down her nose at the treatment of women by men or the different class levels of people, and even the outward appearance of the body she ends up in.  She doesn't do/think/say anything different than every other time traveling character we're read in books or seen in movies.  Just once, I'd like a surprise!  This wasn't the page turner of Friend's previous novels and infact when she name-drops her own book early on (the aforementioned The Spanish Pearl) it feels quite a bit tacky.  If she wants to continue writing time travel novels, I mean I'll keep reading them, but I'm really hoping she begins to bring some new and richly flavored characters to the table and spends a bit more time on developing an intense plotline.

As someone who loves history and especially history involving royal families, this book was just perfect. It was a slow burning romance, which only really came out in the last 30% or so, the story before that was interesting and full of history but not much romance or lesbian themed. So for somebody who is only interested in lesbian content in novels, this might not be the right book. 
I loved that most of the historic facts were real and Cathrine Friend build a story around true events. This timeframe and Queen Elisabeth I is just fascinating and I felt this book was a great history lesson wrapt up in a story to enjoy. 
I was going back and forth between 4 and 5 stars but settled on 4 stars and wished I could give 4 ½ stars just because I hoped for a little bit of a longer time with Meg and Jamie together. It was ended kind of abruptly and I was hoping for more. 
The characters were portrait in a very realistic way and the author did a great job in changing the characters from 1560 to 2017 and how different people talked and acted. The writing style was marvelous and it was hard to put the book down.