Lookin 4 a book where a girl goes back in time and falls in love with a boy who lives in a mansion?

Though narrated in the stylized, spine-tingling voice that has become a Cooney trademark, this tale of time travel and romance lacks the momentum of the author's best work (The Face on the Milk Carton; Driver's Ed). While her decidedly unromantic boyfriend tinkers with a car engine, Annie wanders through the soon-to-be-demolished Stratton mansion, longing for a more gracious way of life. Suddenly she "falls through" 100 years-landing in 1895 just in time to witness (albeit hazily) a murder.

The first person Annie meets is Hiram "Strat" Stratton, slated to inherit both the mansion and the family fortune if he marries his plain but sweet and devoted cousin Harriett. Annie and Strat fall head over heels in love, thus reproducing in the 19th century a triangle loosely similar to the situation created by Annie's father, who, unbeknownst to Annie's mother, is conducting an affair with a co-worker. Along with the murder, the various affairs of the heart provide fodder for almost requisite musings on the position of women then and now.

Constrained by the novel's black-and-white approach, the truly intriguing social issues raised here never acquire real urgency. This sequel to Both Sides of Time (Delacorte, 1995) fails as both a romance and a time-travel story. Anna Sophia Lockwood once again slips back in time to be with her love, Hiram Stratton, Jr. She arrives only to find Strat's sister in the clutches of the nefarious Walker Walkley; Strat locked up in an insane asylum because of her (and the large fortune Walkley wants to get his mitts on); and Strat's fiancee, Harriet, dying of TB in an Adirondack sanitarium.

Annie rescues Strat, takes him to Harriet in time for her last breath, and then sends him along his way before being kidnapped by Walkley. In the end, of course, she ends up back in her own time, better able to deal with the turbulence within her family. The time-travel device seems to exist in order to give Cooney a soap box from which to moralize on the plight of women in the late 19th century, and it stands out from the narrative like a sore thumb.

Even the romance flops. The same young man who spends a wakeful night at Annie's side, watching her sleep and twining her hair through his fingers, forgets about her completely when he sees Harriet. Cooney tries several times to work in the turmoil in Annie's family, but it comes off as forced as the young woman's endless musings about the perfection of Strat's love.

They are a tiresome pair of lovers, caught in a tiresome story. For more successful time-travel romance, try Jack Finney's Time and Again (S. , 1986) or Eileen Dunlop's Elizabeth Elizabeth (Holt, 1977; o.p.).?Patricia A.

Third in a time-travel series, this story continues the saga of the wealthy Stratton family in the 1890s. Tod Lockwood travels from the 1990s to save 16-year-old Devonny Stratton from an unwanted arranged marriage. He manages to rescue her on her wedding day by bringing her into the 20th century.

After spending time with Tod's family, the girl feels called to return to her own time to untangle the problems she has left behind. Subplots involve Devonny's best friend Flossie's plan to elope with an Italian immigrant from the laboring class, and her father's scheme to lock his ex-wife, Devonny's mother, away in an attic room. Meanwhile, Tod and Devonny are falling in love.

This tale, like its companions, is pure melodrama. Its characters are more types than fully fleshed-out individuals.