Hi, everyone!
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for this first book in a new series – SPEAKEASY: A Time Travel Novel by Elyse Douglas on this Virtual Author Book Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an excerpt from the book, an about the author section, the author’s social media links and a Rafflecopter giveaway. Enjoy!
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Book Description
In 2019, A West Village Nightclub Singer, Roxie Raines, stumbles through a basement doorway into the past and finds herself in Roaring Twenties New York, with all its dangers, secrets, excitement, and romance.
Roxie Raines lurches through a secret basement doorway in 2019, and time-slips back to New York’s raucous Roaring Twenties. While she dazzles the speakeasy crowds with her “modern sound,” she gets trapped in the dangerous web of Frankie Shay, an evil club owner. She struggles to escape his control and return to the basement doorway that sent her to 1925.
When she meets the handsome detective, Jake Kane, it’s love at first sight, but Jake has a secret past, and her own time travel secret makes him suspicious.
Roaring Twenties New York comes alive with flappers, gangsters, romance and speakeasies and Roxie’s stunning rise to stardom could come with the price of losing both the man she loves and her own life.
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60592112-speakeasy?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=bpKHMinHIf&rank=1
SPEAKEASY: A Time Travel Novel
by Elyse Douglas
Publisher: Broadback (April 5, 2022)
Category: Time Travel, Historical Fiction Romance
Tour Dates May 3-June 30
ISBN: 979-8423229016
Available in Print and ebook, 375 pages
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My Book Review
RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars
SPEAKEASY: A Time Travel Novel (Book #1) by Elyse Douglas is an entertaining and smart time travel romance set in New York City in 1925. I have read other time travel romances by this author and always enjoy them. While this is the first book in a new series, it does have a complete plot without a cliffhanger.
In August of 2019, Roxie Raines is a struggling singer/pianist who loves performing the old classics. After her performance in Speakeasy, a New York club in Greenwich Village, she follows a local street person who has broken in to the basement and watches him vanish through a blue lit whole in the wall. When she is startled by the bar cat, Roxie falls through, too.
Roxie wakes in the alley behind The Black Cat in New York City in 1925. Roxie finds herself held by a mob boss who discovers her talent. Roxie loves the praise she gets for her performances, but she wants her freedom. She has no connection to the outside world excerpt for the postcards she drops from her hotel room window asking for rescue. She is discovered and rescued by a handsome personal detective and his assistant, but Roxie still does not who to trust with her past. It is 1925 and mob bosses, bootleggers, bribed politicians, and dirty cops are all fighting for their piece of the action.
Can Roxie find her way back to 2019 and does she even want to?
This is a fun romp through New York City in 1925. Roxie is a talented heroine who is capable in the present world, but much more suited to the 1920’s. Jakes’s story just keeps becoming more complicated as more of his personal life secrets are revealed and his dilemma between what he considers the honorable solution versus what he personally wants. The romance progresses at a believable pace and is appropriate to the time-period. The description of clothes, locations, laws, and personal rights was well researched and interesting. The only thing that slightly bothered me was the main antagonist, Frankie Shay, at times seems more of a caricature than a fully fleshed character, but he still fit with the overall suspense plot.
I really enjoy Ms. Douglas’ time travel romances and I am looking forward to seeing where the next novel in this series takes me.
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Excerpt
SPEAKEASY
Elyse Douglas
Twenty-six-year-old Roxie Raines took the subway down to Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village and hurried off in a warm, August rain. It was nearly dark, and the shimmer of streetlights on the wet streets made it seem later than it was. She glanced up to see a tall construction crane, quiet now but surely swinging about during work hours. Another high rise? Did New York City really need another luxury high rise? There was an “old” part of Roxie, a part that longed for the old New York she’d seen online and in old black-and-white movies, before the glass towers, the needle-pointed, multimillion-dollar condos, and the encroaching chain stores took over.
Cars splashed water, taxis honked, and a thin, dripping pan handler shook his chipped cup for loose change, little mumbles moving his lips.
Roxie glanced at him and thought it odd that he wore retro clothes, scuffed wing-tipped shoes, slacks with no crease, a matching suit coat, and an open collar white shirt. His old-fashioned, gray fedora was tilted right, low over his brow, and a large mole on the left side of his nose helped give him a menacing look. Still, she felt compassion for him. He seemed strangely out of place under the yellow smudge of light from an overhead streetlamp, and he seemed utterly lost in the lonely, silver rain.
Fumbling with her umbrella, Roxie stopped, dug into the pocket of her yellow rain jacket, found three quarters, and dropped them into the panhandler’s cup. He nodded, his vacant eyes staring ahead.
“Isn’t there a shelter nearby you can go to?” Roxie asked.
He didn’t look at her, and his response was incomprehensible.
“Can I help you go somewhere and get out of this rain?” Roxie asked, seeing he was soaked, water dripping from the brim of his tattered hat.
He slowly turned to her, his eyes glassy and wide. “Do you know where you come from, girlie?” he asked, in a low, gravelly voice that sounded like a threat. “Do you know how you got here, doll? Are you stranded, too?”
Roxie felt a shiver ripple up her spine and she didn’t answer.
He flashed her a crooked gash of a grin. “No… I see it in you. You don’t know where you are or how you got here. You’re lost. Just like me, doll, you’re lost.”
And then he laughed, a sinister laugh.
Spooked, Roxie whirled around, thrust her umbrella toward the rain and charging wind, and headed off toward Charles Street, her sneakers soaked, her capri jeans damp, and her chin-length, blonde hair gone wild and frizzy.
“What the hell was that all about?” she mumbled to herself, quickening her steps, and not looking back at the man. And then she thought, How do people get so lost and so crazy?
Roxie had a gig that weekend in a Greenwich Village bar called Speakeasy.
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About the Author
Elyse Douglas is the pen name for the married writing team Elyse Parmentier and Douglas Pennington.
She and her husband, Douglas Pennington, have completed many novels, including The Other Side of Summer, The Summer Letters, The Christmas Eve Series, Time Visitor, Time Change, The Summer Diary, and The Christmas Diary Series.
Social Media Links
Website: www.elysedouglas.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/douglaselyse
Facebook: www.facebook.com/elyse.authorsdouglas
Purchase Link
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Rafflecopter Giveaway
“http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/e23ee71d1542/”
Sounds very intriguing! Great review BTW 🙂
Thank you very much, Damyanti!
I am so glad you enjoyed ‘Speakeasy’! Thanks for hosting!
You are welcome. I really enjoyed the book.