Passenger

Drawn to the book for the time-travel premise, hesitant of the romance novel reputation. Wait, that's my review for Outlander. Some things in common, some different - and this is slightly better.

Outlander has one time travel incident - this book has several. Outlander has one "world" for the protagonist - this book has several, as the main characters go skipping through time. So already this is the better "time travel" novel.

I didn't find the romance believable in either of the books - I am not the target audience.

Finally, the plot of Outlander is tied in with historical conflict and events. This book much less so - the time travelers here are essentially tourists, acting outside of history.

All tied up, let's deal with the story plot. This is a mystery, with a MacGuffin that shows up at the very end. The chases and convoluted politics make a sort of sense, even if they are a little hard to get into. Outlander has... hrmm, what was the plot there? Other than a lot of spanking. This book easily has the better plot, but ends abruptly (after nearly 500 pages) to make room for the second book, published a single year later (and likely written much sooner). Does this book stand on its own? No, not really.

I could be convinced to buddy-read the concluding sequel, but am unlikely to pick it up on my own.