Distant Dreams by Jenny Lykins is a welcome addition to the Time Passages series published by Penguin Putnam.

Shaelyn Sumner uses her job as a reporter as an escape from the attentions of any men who approach her.  While travelling around the world she has no time for love and few friends.

Her latest assignment is to take the place of a bride in the reenactment of a wedding which took place on board a ship in 1830 at Cape Helm.

Little does she know that slipping an antique ring on her finger will transport her back in time to take the place of a real bride about to be wed to a man she has never met.  And with the ring stuck on her finger she seems to have no way of returning back to her own time.

Alec Hawthorne is a man about to marry his brother's bride so that one of them can have a chance for a happy marriage.  Their bullying father is determined that Charles should marry Phillipa Morgan despite the fact that he loves another.  So Alec decides to sacrifice his own happiness and pretend to be Charles when Phillipa arrives at Cape Helm.

Surprised by how the plain Phillipa has changed into the beauty before him he absently signs his own name in the register.  Little does he know that the woman he has just wed is Shaelyn, wearing the antique ring his brother sent to his betrothed.  Not only that, but Shaelyn too has signed her own name.

At first Shaelyn goes along with the wedding believing it to be only an act.  However as the day progresses and she is whisked away from the docks by Alec she begins to question where she is.  Cape Helm no longer looks the way it did before she stepped on board the ship.  Soon she realises that she is in the past and that somehow the ring is the reason she is stuck there.  No matter how hard she tries there seems no way to remove the ring from her finger.

When Shaelyn and Alec realise that they are legally married they decide that the best course of action would be to annul the marriage.  A fairly easy task, were it not for the household gossips who believe the marriage has been consumated.

And more problems arise in the form of Faith Almany, the woman Alec's father has lined up to be his wife.

As Shaelyn is torn between the two worlds she finds herself falling in love with Alec and his siblings.  His sister Molly soon becomes one of her closest friends.  Soon she is wishing not for an annulment, but for Alec to return her love and to find a way to remain in the past forever.

But there are other forces which seem to be determined to keep the couple apart.  Not only is Alec's father willing to do anything in his power to remove Shaelyn, but Alec himself is involved in the dangerous game of smuggling - not the most sensible occupation for the man, suffering as he does from seasickness.

A wonderful book that's ending brought me close to tears - unusual for me, I am not the weepy type.  I still think that Echoes of Tomorrow is Ms Lykins's best book to date but this one is very close to being as good.

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Also by Jenny Lykins:   Lost Yesterday, Echoes of Tomorrow, Waiting for Yesterday and River of Dreams.

Read an Interview with Jenny Lykins.

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