Violin prodigy Etta Spencer had big plans for her future, but a tragedy has put her once-bright career at risk. Closely tied to her musical skill, however, is a mysterious power she doesn't even know she has. When her two talents collide during a stressful performance, Etta is drawn back hundreds of years through time.

Etta wakes, confused and terrified, in 1776, in the midst a fierce sea battle. Nicholas Carter, the handsome young prize master of a privateering ship, has been hired to retrieve Etta and deliver her unharmed to the Ironwoods, a powerful family in the Colonies - the very same one that orchestrated her jump back, and one Nicholas himself has ties to. But discovering she can time travel is nothing compared to the shock of discovering the true reason the Ironwoods have ensnared her in their web.

Another traveler has stolen an object of untold value from them, and, if Etta can find it, they will return her to her own time. Out of options, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the mysterious traveler. But as they draw closer to each other and the end of their search, the true nature of the object, and the dangerous game the Ironwoods are playing, comes to light - threatening to separate her not only from Nicholas, but her path home...forever.

Listening Length

13 hours and 28 minutes
Author

Alexandra Bracken
Narrator

Saskia Maarleveld
Audible release date

January 5, 2016
Language

English
Publisher

Brilliance Audio
ASIN

B018WINFO4
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	13 hours and 28 minutes
Author	Alexandra Bracken
Narrator	Saskia Maarleveld
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	January 05, 2016
Publisher	Brilliance Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B018WINFO4
Best Sellers Rank	#72,499 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #24 in Time Travel Fiction for Teens #168 in Paranormal Romance for Teens #232 in Teen & Young Adult Time Travel Fiction

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Ashley

Long but pretty good

Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2017

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It's so hard to rate this book. Part world tour, part preaching, part overwrought dramatic love story, there were things about it I absolutely loved and equally as many things that really didn't work for me at all. I'm a little underwhelmed, but I'll still definitely pick up the sequel.... so I dunno. Conflicting feelings.

The mystery of the astrolabe and the threat of them being caught really wasn't that compelling to me. The tension wasn't there, the stakes just weren't high enough to me. That being said, I was very surprised by the ending.

The time travel aspect was one of the most interesting aspects in that Alexandra Bracken truly did a wonderful job of transporting the reader to each specified destination and time period and immersing us in each unique location. However, the actual dynamics of how the time travel worked in this book were not super clear to me. It all seemed a little muddled and I honestly started zoning out when it started going into detail about the mechanics of it all.

I enjoyed Etta and Nicholas and their love story. Although I didn't think Nicholas was *quite* 18th century enough. Despite the minor issues I had with the book there was something very compelling about their love story, which is what pulled me through the slower parts of the book. They had some very sweet, poignant moments that were beautifully written. I will definitely being reading Wayfarer.

8 people found this helpful

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not really finding anything I liked, until now

Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2016

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I have been in a book slump for awhile, not really finding anything I liked, until now. I will say that the first 50 pages did drag a little, which I later realized were setup for everything that was going to happen later, but I did have to really push to get through the first few chapters to get to the meat of the story. Once I got there though, I could not put this book down. I was reading and listening to it on audiobook on the way to work because I had to know what was going to happen next.

Passenger explores the idea of time travel, no not a Doc Brown kind of way, in a way that actually sounds pretty plausible. There are wrinkles in the timeline scattered throughout the world that "travelers" can use to be transported to a different time. That is just a basic quick summary, Bracken does an excellent job of spelling it out much more clearly in the book so it makes complete sense. I found the whole concept very intriguing and better than many of the time travel books that I have read in the past.

As for the characters, we switch POV between Etta and Nicholas as the story progresses which I loved. I always enjoy getting into multiple characters heads because I think it tells a more well rounded story. Poor Etta, has no idea what is going on half the time and is playing catch up with this new world, but she takes it in stride and was a strong character. Nicholas, was an interesting puzzle to put together, his life has not been easy, but he has come out of it resilient and with a good moral compass. I loved both of them, especially the slow burn of the romance that blossomed between them, that was not rushed and was extremely sweet.

The action and suspenseful elements were also fantastic and I was flipping pages and reading frantically to find out what was going to happen next. Passenger is one of those books that while it is categorized as YA, it would appeal to older audiences as well I think. It has a little bit of everything, is very well written and will keep you reading well into the night to finish it.

The ending is not really a cliffhanger, but it does leave a lot of questions that you are going to want answers too. I am eagerly awaiting the sequel which I think comes out in January. I will also be looking into Bracken's other books as well since I love her writing style. Overall, fantastic book that I loved so much, I know it will be one I will be re-reading in the future just so I can go back and visit this world again and again.

2 people found this helpful

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Emilee S.

AMAZING

Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2018

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Ahh, so many amazing things about this book, LOVED it! Time travel has always been such a facinating theory to me and I love seeing how writers play it out in their novels. I absolutely loved Alexander's version and how that plays out in this world. I also love historical fiction so seeing all of these little bits and pieces of history in this book made me so happy. Also Nicholas and Etta are freaking amazing, and like them together??? I was swooning over them this entire book. 😍

While this book could be a little overwhelming at times with the long chapters and sometimes detailed writing and was a little slow I still adored it! I highly recommend it and I'm super excited for the sequel.

3 people found this helpful

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Book Blog Bird

Not for me ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 7, 2016

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Hmmm.

You know when a book is so massively hyped up that you almost don’t want to read it in case you hate it? This was one of those books. And unfortunately, for me, it didn’t live up to the hype.

I loved the idea. I’m a massive time travel fan, so any book or film that promises me some time travelling shenanigans will get my money. The idea that time travel could be a genetic ability was really cool and had masses of potential and I think for people that enjoy Alexandra Bracken’s style of writing this book could be winner-winner-chicken-dinner. Sadly, I was not one of those people.

Just as some background, I read The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken a while back and it really wasn’t for me. It just didn’t click. At the time, I chalked it up to experience and moved on, but Passenger has left me feeling the same way so now I’m starting to think that maybe Alexandra Bracken’s style of writing just isn’t my cup of tea.

At 500 pages, I found this book to be really over-long, considering the plot is pretty skimpy. I know it’s bad form to compare books by different writers, but when I think about how much plot, description and characterisation Sarah J Maas crammed into ACOMAF it really made me wonder why this author’s editor didn’t send the original manuscript back to her with lots of red-pen ‘CUT THIS BIT OUT’ comments over it. The same story could have been told easily in 200 pages by an author with a more succinct writing style.

There were some really long-winded passages where Etta and Nicholas did a whole bunch of navel-gazing. There was miles too much bland description about things that didn’t really need describing. These things pulled me out of the action and left me a little bored at times. The action doesn’t get going for quite a way into the book and when it does, it’s quite slow-moving.

Having said this, I think that this is just this author’s style of writing. I noticed the same things about The Darkest Minds and that book didn’t thrill me as much as I’d hoped either. And interestingly that was a book that had an underlying idea I wanted to love, too.

Etta was an okay character, but I thought she really loved her violin-playing skills a bit too much. On the plus side, she was brave and resourceful, but anyone who goes into their own little world and mimes playing an instrument in front of other people needs a quick poke in the eye.

Nicholas was okay, but too noble and I’m-not-worthy for me to get behind as a love interest. He comes from a time where interracial relationships were illegal, so I understood his reticence, but I’d have preferred him to have had a bit more backbone. I think that for some people he would be an awesome love interest, but personally I prefer my male MCs to be a bit more rogueish.

And: Cliche Alert! Etta’s mum is a cold, frosty woman, and she’s (you’ll never guess!) ... British.

I'm going to skip right past the bit where the author describes various characters as having 'British' accents (there's no such thing - Britain has literally hundreds of different accents) and go right to the part where I find it so tedious when the cold, frosty woman turns out to be British. Seriously, it’s like some authors think no other nation in the world has emotionally unavailable women. Hate to break it to you, but this isn’t what we're like. I’m not sitting here in my ice castle, platinum-blonde hair twisted up into an elegant chignon, breathing liquid-nitrogen fumes all over my laptop. I haven’t sent my barely-weaned children off to boarding school. I’m actually *whispers* quite affectionate towards my friends and family.

Gah!

In fact, if there’s one thing I tire of more than the British Ice Queen cliché, it’s the plump, tea-swilling, Mrs Overall, ‘Alright Ducks?’ cliché.

And guess what? There’s one of those in this book too.

Honestly, I’m not sure I’ll read any more books by this author. Irritating stereotypes aside, she’s not a bad writer per se, just not completely on my wavelength. If you love long, meandering passages of description then she’d be right up your alley, but I’m just not sure she’s for me.

9 people found this helpful

Amy C

Time traveling might not be for me.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 27, 2017

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This book was unlike something I've read for a very long time, and unfortunately just fell short of my expectations. Going into this book I knew 2 things, firstly it is about time travel, secondly there is a slight theme of insta-love between the 2 main characters. Things I didn't expect was the slow plot line, the extent to which things were overlooked or just merely accepted, and general lack of enthusiasm.

Generally speaking, things like insta-love normally put me off reading a book. If I know there's going to be a romance that happens almost without question, I tend to avoid that book like the plague because it is one of my pet hates. However, I really like the idea of time travel, I always have, and I even wrote a story on time travel for my English Lit GCSE. So I had fairly high hopes for this novel.

The story itself wasn't a bad idea. I liked the idea of the plot, but felt like the execution was just poor. I didn't hate the writing style per se, just felt like the pacing was off. One minute we're in 2015/2016, the next we're in 1776, followed swiftly by London in the 1940s. But between each time change things either moved slowly, for example, the change from the 1700s to the 1900s, or rather quickly, like the change from 2010s to 1700s. And with each change in time period, my attention just failed.

It took me a while to actually get into the book, the start was slightly confusing and a little slow, and for the majority of the book this remained to be the case. About a third of the way through things began to pick up and I was interested in the story line, but by the last third I was just waiting for it all to end. I had no emotional connection to the plot line, I wasn't invested in the characters, and I had no real sense of urgency about escaping both 'enemies'. Etta and Nicholas were just bland, and if Nicholas wasn't dwelling on his ulterior motive, or Etta thinking about saving her mother and Alice, then they were staring longingly at each other and complaining about the fact they loved each other but couldn't be together, followed swiftly by them clinging to each other.

Speaking of Etta, she's supposed to be a violin prodigy, but for 80% of the book she doesn't pick up, play or even want to play the violin. And I understand that she's time travelling, but in 1940s London a man takes a violin with him when the city is under attack. This seemed like the perfect moment for Etta to play a tune, she's just said her goodbyes to Alice, realised that what she wants to do is pretty much impossible, and instead of doing something we've been told is her way of dealing with emotions and escaping the world for a short period of time, she spends the entire time wishing she could be closer to Nicholas, smelling Nicholas, kissing Nicholas. It's infuriating. She was just one-dimensional. She constantly forgets that in her timeline women are valued as a somewhat influential part of society and that in the past women were viewed merely as something to be seen and not heard. and she's supposed to be smart.

Nicholas is the complete opposite. He dwells in self-pity remembering the time he let his friend fall off a cliff or mountain, or whatever it was. He doesn't think himself deserving of Etta's affections because he is effectively going behind her back, but at the same time he's normally the one to make sexual comments, or to put himself in danger because of her. And he's constantly in a grump because he's not in a boat sailing the open sea.

The only character I really liked was Alice, and she's barely in this!

It also annoyed me how certain things were overlooked. For example, Etta is wearing a 1940s style dress when she travels to Paris in the 1890s and no one bats an eyelid? She runs straight through a park chased by some bad guys, and no one seems to care, like it's a regular occurrence. Every time the period of time changes, they have money to sort out any problems they might face. If they don't have a plan, they end up exactly where they are supposed to be regardless. And the entire clues thing was ridiculous. After London their task seemed more than a little straight forward. They start off needing to find the first clue in London because their initial idea falling through, and from there it is almost a literal walk in the park. From time to time it's merely a case of finding the next 'portal' (I know they call this something else, but I'm going with portal), and there's barely anything in their way between each. It's almost too easy.

If I'm honest, I felt let down by this, and although I love time travel, this puts me in mind of the time travelers wife, and I didn't particularly like that either. Maybe I don't really like time travel books, just the concept. The thing is, a part of me did like this book. The writing style varied slightly throughout the book, and in some cases I did just stop caring and was simply reading to get the story over with, but there were some parts I couldn't put it down for. It was just a case of finding the right parts for me.

I'm interested to see where the story goes, but don't know if I want to pick up the next book. Like I said, the plot does intrigue me, but given that I liked the concept for this book and didn't fully enjoy it, it makes me wonder whether picking up Wayfarer is entirely worth it. Maybe if I saw it in the library, or for really cheap, I'd pick it up, but for now this isn't a priority.

All I can say is if you enjoyed The Time Travelers Wife, any of Alexandra Bracken's previous novels, or simply can overlook a few minor mishaps and insta-love storylines, you might really enjoy this.

I just didn't love this. But you might.

One person found this helpful

ReadbyCait

Great start to the series

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 16, 2016

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I received a copy of this book via Netgalley in return for an honest and fair review. Thank You!

This book has had so much buzz about it, and everyone who has read it has loved it. I wanted it to be amazing, and it was.

Etta is a violinist and her next concern is her debut, which is next month. While performing in the Met, where her mother works, she is suddenly whisked away in time, accompanied by another girl who was also at the Met, Sophia, the girl is a traveler and so is Etta. Etta has been brought back in time by Sophia’s grandfather, the grandmaster and head of the Ironwood family. He wants Etta to find something that her mother stole from him. If she get it and brings it back to him, he’ll let her and her mother go.

Nicholas dreams of owning his own ship, freeing himself from the Ironwood family. Once you’re in their web, they’ll never let you go. Nicholas is hoping that this is the last trip will be the last thing he’ll do for them. Carry two women to New York safely and he’ll be free. When he first meets Etta he knows something isn’t quite right, when Etta is confused and lost and she has no idea what she is. Nicholas is an eighteenth century gentleman, he is protective, strong, loyal and well-mannered. His past connections with Ironwood haunt him in so many way,

Etta and Nicholas have days to find the mysterious object and bring it back to Ironwood, and so they follow clues that Etta’s mother left all over time. THe clues takes them to many places, and while searching for this mysterious object Nicholas and Etta get to know one another.

The story is so interesting. Filled with different times and countries, we got to see and experience a whole range of settings. The jungle was probably my favourite. As it was a beautiful lush setting. Alexandra did a great job of describing the different scenes, she obviously did a lot of research, and you can see that it paid of. I love the way that the time travelling was portrayed. It’s different to any other time travelling, I’ve read about or seen.

I love the romance, I love their relationship growth, how they grew with and into each other. The story is told in the third person, and alternates POVs between Etta and Nicholas. The climax is heart-pounding. The book ends on a cliffhanger. I didn’t know that this was part of a duology, and as I was reading, and saw the percentage in the nineties, I knew there wasn’t enough pages left in the book, to wrap up the story. The cliffhanger is kind of sad, but you know it is not going to be as bad as it could be by a few of the lines at the end of the book. With an ending that cruel, I need the next book Wayfarer, NOW!

I’m going to be honest I so wanted to give this book five stars, the only thing that is stopping me is that for me, it was a very slow start, and it took me along time to get into the book. I kept starting and stopping reading this. But once I was over the halfway point I couldn’t put the book down. The excitement became greater and Etta and Nicholas hurried along their quest. I’ll probably try and reread it again in a few months, I have been in bit of a reading slump in the last couple months. This book has definitely brought back my spark for reading.

Janine

Lots of potential, but slow and confusing at times.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 2, 2017

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Passenger is a book with so much potential. The idea of travellers and the world the author has created is fascinating. I'm really interested in Nicholas as a character and I feel like we didn't get to see half of who Etta could be. I found Passenger a little slow and confusing at times, but I remain hopeful for Wayfarer. Now that the world and its rules are more established, I hope we'll see some more character development.

Fair warning, Passenger doesn't so much end on a cliffhanger as it does end half way through a single story. The core plot of the book isn't resolved and we're left with multiple characters' fates hanging in the balance.

2 people found this helpful

The Fiction Forest

Hard work

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 20, 2018

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I really struggled so much with this book. It has so much potential and I love that one of the main characters was a person of colour.
The book could have been cut shorter and there was a lot of unnecessary content which felt was only placed to fluff up the book.

I was originally giving this book 3 stars but the ending left a huge cliffhanger. So many loose ends and in my opinion ended so abruptly it was as if you read half a book. I will most likely read a review of the next book to see what happens next rather than our myself through the next book.

One person found this helpful

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