Cascade

Mom touched my underdress—a gown made six hundred years before—and her eyes widened as she rubbed the raw silk between thumb and forefinger. She turned and touched Lia’s gown. “Where did you get these clothes?”

Gabi knows she’s left her heart in the fourteenth century and she persuades Lia to help her to return, even though they know doing so will risk their very lives. When they arrive, weeks have passed and all of Siena longs to celebrate the heroines who turned the tide in the battle against Florence—while the Florentines will go to great lengths to see them dead.

But Marcello patiently awaits, and Gabi must decide if she’s willing to leave her family behind for good in order to give her heart to him forever. (from Goodreads)

This book was slightly short of a letdown. The first book in this series, Waterfall, was great. I really enjoyed it. But there were so many things wrong with this book. 

So Waterfall took place in 1332. Yet three months later, when they return to Italy, it's 1342. How on Earth did no one catch that mistake? It was one of the first things that I noticed about this book. 

Secondly, this was the first book I've read in a while that I seriously considered the MCs to be Mary Sues. They could speak fluent medieval Italian, had perfect weaponry skills, had every man in sight hitting on them, oh, excuse me, every hot man, were constantly being called beautiful, and nothing really bad ever happened to them. Or if it did, one poof later and they were fine.

I also like heroines to be slightly kickass. They don't have to be Katniss or Katsa style, but they should be able to fight off whatever's pursuing them without always being saved by the guys. No. Just no. Whenever Gabi was in a scrape, Marcello would just show up and save her. 

I don't know if the publisher is a Christian publisher. It didn't say anything about it on the book. I'd have liked to know if it was, because the religious aspect of this book was just getting to be too much. At the beginning of Waterfall, Gabi was barely religious, didn't even know if she believed in God. By the end of book two, there wasn't a chapter that went by where there wasn't some sort of prayer or plea. I know that this is medieval Italy, but Gabi's a modern character. Her internal thoughts aren't medieval.

One of the biggest mistakes had to do with Gabi's mother (who, conviently, was just as Mary Sue-ish as her daughters). She had to get a docorate in anthropology as well as archaeology. I've been fairly interested in archaeology for a while now, and archaeology is a branch of anthropology. 

It seems the author needs to do a bit more research. 

This gets two stars because of the time travel and ancient Italy. Oh, and Luca. He's still my favorite character (not that there are many characters I still like).