I received this as an eARC in return for a fair review.
DNF @ 49 pages.

First, the positives.
That's a great cover!
And the synopsis makes the book so appealing! A retold tale? With a centuries-old curse? Bring it on!

Now to the negatives.
* How is a book about an almost grad student being marketed as YA? Unless she's some great prodigy (which I'm guessing we would hear about ad nauseum if she were), she's got to be about 22. Maybe even a little older. Nope, doesn't work for me as YA.

* The writing is very disjointed and hard to follow. This needs some serious editing. Or just a complete re-write. Something. So much tell and no show.

* I don't need to know every move the MC (Kathryn) makes. Or the history of every item she touches. Or the synopsis of every book she even thinks about reading. Or how once again her parents are leaving her to go on a long trip (she's an adult, can't she handle it?). How does any of this actually need to be in the storyline?

* I'm not even sure what's happening in the other timeline. Something about the woods, and being lost, and then not, and then a house that disappears? I can't even follow that. I give up.

* Insta-love . . . I think, but I can't force myself to waste time reading any more. There are way to many other things out there that will be more enjoyable.


Anyway, this is not a great book. It's not even a good book. It needs some serious help before it goes to printing. I can see a lot of potential here, but it's just not working the way it is.

A beautiful romantic book, where Jacob Grimm is cursed by a witch to be immortal, until he finds true love, A pleasant, escapist read. Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for letting me have an advance reading copy, I enjoyed it.

I decided to give this book a chance and I am so glad I did! I loved the story it really got my heart pumping. The main characters were so interesting and I was so sad when the book was over. Great read.

With "A Love Across Time" I was intrigued by the short summary and was looking forward to a fairy tale re-telling. However, for me it felt all a bit rushed, too much and too little at the same time.

***
In the beginning I really wanted to understand how Jacob came to be, what Kathryn's role is and so on. And you also start with the story waaaaaay back. You get to understand the beginnings of Jacob and his family. And then, chapter by chapter, you time-hop. I personally don't mind, however, for me the past of Jacob was just a bit annoying to read at a certain stage. Yes, he got cursed, however, he was so fixated on one woman after the other, that for me the concept of a fairytale true love was somehow not there.
I did like the idea how Jacob came across all his stories and fairytales, them being influcenced by his past, but for me it was a bit too much.

Then he met Kathryn, it was an insta-attraction, but also, the spark was missing. Although Kathryn was very nice in the beginning, I also could not relate with her development over the book. I would have loved to spend more time on her realtionship with Jacob, but the details were more on her environment.

For me, I personally just expected something different given the title (as in one love lasting over time). It was a nice read but with skipping quite some pages and not leaving me behind with falling for Jacob and Kathryn.

***
Ich persönlich hab mir unter dem Titel "A Love Across Time" eine andere Geschichte vorgestellt, als ich sie schlussendlich gelesen habe. Es war zwar eine Art Retelling von Märchen, aber insgesamt war es zu viel, aber auch zu wenig.
Anfangs bekommt man einen guten Einblick in die Welt von damals, und etwas Hintergrund zu Jacob und seiner Familie. Aber bereits nach ein paar Seiten kamen da für mich Fragen auf, welche nicht mehr beantwortet wurden. Danach wechselt die Sicht bzw. springt man von Kapitel zu Kapitel auch in der Zeit hin und her. Normalerweise mag ich das ganz gern, aber hier war mir das einfach iwie zu viel. Ab einer gewissen Zeit hat mit Jacob leider genervt mit seinem ständigen Drang nach der wahren Liebe.
Ja, die Idee ist interessant, wie Jacob zu seinen Geschichten kommt, aber mir war das iwie zu viel und auch das Konzept der wahren Liebe im Märchen ging hier unter.

Kathryn mochte ich anfangs, aber mir war es etwas zu wenig. Der Fokus auf Kathryn und Jakob hätte für mich mehr sein dürfen, denn die Beziehung, die Gefühle, das ging mir alles zu schnell.

Es war eine nette Geschichte, wo ich einige Seiten jedoch übersprungen habe, um zum Ende zu kommen.

This sounded great in theory, and while I'm not that big of a fan of the whole fairy tale/sci-fi genre, I thought that the premise sounded interesting enough to check out the ARC.

Unfortunately, it fell flat for me. It felt slow and I'm hoping there will be another round of editing before the final publication.

Kindly received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A beautiful romantic book, where Jacob Grimm is cursed by a witch to be immortal, until he finds true love, what happens to him is tied up in the plot, so I will not spoil it. A pleasant, escapist read. Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for letting me have an advance reading copy, I enjoyed it.

I was so excited to read this book. The cover was stunning and the description had me ready to go, but unfortunately it failed to deliver. I found myself skimming through passages, not able to keep my attention for very long.

I thought that this book would be so promising, after all the description really drew me in. But the alternative time lines and the character dialogue was just lacking. I think with some more work this would have been a solid read

Don't you just hate when a book has such a pretty cover and such a good premise but you just, well, not like it?
This was this book for me.
Initially, looking at this book I was buzzing to read it but this book just flopped completely to me.

- Okay, so first of all, I hated the structure of how this was set out. Usually, two contrasting timelines works, but this is only effective when it makes sense. I felt really disconnected from Jacob's character and Kathryn was so boring I couldn't cope with her. With how Jacob acted in the past, I'm not surprised he was cursed.
- I thought the plot was b o r i n g. I really thought I would like this premise but this book moved slower than my Grandma's driving and I had to literally force myself to turn the page. I also feel like the plot could have been better thought out because it all seemed so jumbled and unfinished.
- The writing was as simplistic as it comes and in good need of another round of editing.
- The ROMANCE. I'm sorry but I've never read anything more ridiculous in my life. Instalove doesn't even cover it and Jacob was beyond cringe I actually felt ill reading the nonsense he came out with. I didn't believe in their relationship at all.

I'm so let down by this book because the premise of fairytales and curses is SO up my street but this was a bad version of a potentially amazing idea.
<I>I received this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</i>

The premise of ‘A Love Across Time’ was mouthwatering: fairy-tales, time-travel and immortality, romance…a combination so seductive and delicious I wanted this immediately. There’s also that bit of meta thrown in for the literary geeks who love the idea of a protagonist-author observing the commentaries and parodies/retellings on his own works given the hindsight and experience of immortality—all boxed up neatly within a reframed kind of fairytale written by Genevieve Jane.

But I’ll have to say from the start that it sadly didn’t work out for me at all.

That Jacob Grimm himself is a cursed man doomed to wander through time because of his commitment-phobic ways throughout the centuries is quite a joke on the contemporary manwhores…and one that I was interested in reading. But that he stays absorbed only in finding ‘true love’ with many women over time for the sole purpose of ending his curse made the romance trajectory too much of a transactional one for me to want to continue.

I also thought that the narrative could have benefitted from additional rounds of developmental and line-/copyediting. Too often, I found myself caught between the quick development in Jacob’s own story and the recounting of what seemed like superfluous details of Kathryn's life (e.g. taking the stairs for fitness, her parents’ occupations, her studies—details that essentially didn’t seem integral to the overall plot) that brought the forward momentum to a stutter.

Told as past/present timelines in alternating chapters as the story developed in 2 parallel lines, its start-lull rhythm had me skimming so much as we’re told but not shown how Kathryn and Jacob’s relationship develops in the months and years that go by, along with Jacob’s past life where everything happened at a more dizzying pace.

Which brings me to the Sc-fi/Teen Fantasy genre the book categorised under: Genevieve Jane’s somewhat simplistic writing-style felt more suited to the book being a YA one, though the college-age romance context suggested otherwise—with more adult themes that played havoc with what I expected and didn’t quite get in the end.

All things considered, this read like a first or second draft—essentially too roughly-hewn at the moment—which still needed more polishing (more tightness?) before it could shine. I wish I could have gotten into this more (and this really, is my bottomline), but it did read like the fairytale in many ways: archetypal, with somewhat flat-ish protagonists whose historical connection to each other are emphasised more than depth of emotion.