Monday, January 18, 2021

Ye Olde Antique Shoppe: The Edward V Coin by Margaret Brazear

 

First Line: It came as no surprise to Rachel that she would inherit everything from the last of her spinster aunts.
 
When Rachel's spinster aunt dies, her inheritance includes an unexpected addition: an antique shop that hasn't been opened for over sixty years. Rachel can't help it; she has pound signs dancing in her head. The sale of the London properties and all the contents should give her enough money to pursue her dream of having her own fashion house and designer label.
 
She takes her friend, Peter Attwood, to the shop with her, thinking that his expertise as an archaeologist and historian will help to give her an idea of what the shop's contents may be worth, but they find more than they expected. They find a coin minted at the time of young King Edward V-- a coin that's worth an absolute fortune-- but when they try to take it out of the shop, they find themselves in the year 1483, the year the coin was minted. Stepping back into the shop, Peter persuades Rachel to dress in historical costumes found in the back of the building so they can venture out into the world of the young princes in the Tower.
 
But their adventures don't go as smoothly as they'd hoped.
 
~
 
I'm one of those annoying people who'd love to step into a time machine and go on adventures, so how could I ignore Margaret Brazear's Ye Olde Antique Shoppe series? It has a wonderful premise. An antique store that's not been open for over sixty years. A coin that takes a person into another time when it's removed from the building. Period costumes aplenty to use as camouflage...

For the most part, the premise lived up to its promise, but there were two things that irritated me a bit. One was the proofreader who was unable to tell when to use "past" instead of "passed." This happened several times and is such an easy fix. The second irritation concerned the characters. Rachel is in it for the money. She's a Here & Now Girl who doesn't give a hoot about the past or anything else other than gathering up the money for her fashion house. Okay. She and I aren't going to be BFFs, but that's not the thing that bothered me the most. What really made me roll my eyes was the fact that she became all fire-breathing feminist when she went back into the past, and she refused to keep her mouth shut even when she learned what the consequences were for her verbal diarrhea. Peter was better-- but not much. For a supposed expert, he was absolute rubbish at planning ahead. This is good for getting characters into scrapes that they have to figure their way out of, but I'd rather have those scrapes be unforeseen circumstances instead of something brought on by a lack of basic logic.

Were Rachel and Peter irritating enough to keep me from continuing with the series? No, at least not enough to keep me from reading the second book. I liked the look into that period of English history, and when the two begin to learn what Rachel's uncle was up to with his magical antique shop and those historical costumes, I wanted to know more. Besides, it's still a marvelous premise, and I want to see how the author develops it.

Ye Olde Antique Shoppe: The Edward V Coin by Margaret Brazear
ASIN: B07C9W8NX4
Margaret Brazear © 2018
eBook, 157 pages

Science Fiction/Time Travel, #1 Ye Olde Antique Shoppe
Rating: B-
Source: Purchased from Amazon.

6 comments:

  1. The premise sounds fantastic, Cathy. I agree with you about 'past' and 'passed,' though. I certainly make typos like that of my own when I write, but that's where editors, etc., come in. And I do like my characters to learn from their mistakes and the surroundings; it makes them more realistic. Still, it's a good premise; I hope that, if it's part of a series, the series gets better.

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  2. This does sound like an interesting premise. I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets annoyed with typos and editor errors. Maybe they should hire us as their editors : ). I also get annoyed with idiocy in characters and tend to dislike them. That cover is gorgeous though!

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  3. This one sounds more irritating than not. I'm a big time-travel fan but I have abandoned more than one of them where the travelers were just airheads who didn't fully appreciate what a glorious adventure they were being allowed to have.

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    1. Rachel I don't like. Peter is okay, but he needs to jumpstart his little grey cells. It's what I learned about the old uncle and what he was doing with his shop that really caught my attention, and that's the major reason why I want to read one more book.

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