Love’s Labyrinth by Anne Kelleher is part of the Time Passages series and as we come to expect from this series it is of a high standard.

Best friends Olivia Lindsley and Alison O’Neill are travelling through England and have reached the next stop on their tour…Talcott Forest.  For Olivia it is a working holiday as she draws closer to completing her father’s work of discovering the true identity of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady.  When she has completed the task she plans to devote her life to a career on the stage.  For Alison, she is along for the ride.

In an inn near to Talcott Forest Alison and Olivia come across a portrait of another Olivia, this one being a Lady who had lived during the 16th century.  There are no details as to who the woman was exactly and Alison jokingly suggests that it was Olivia herself.

But the joke takes a turn towards the bizarre when Olivia and Alison dress in period costume to find themselves completely lost not only in the hedge maze that they have entered but also in time.

Split from the rest of the tour party the friends try to find their way to the centre of the labyrinth in order to view the eclipse that won’t wait for them to find their way.  When they exit the maze they find themselves face to face with Geoffrey Talcott, an amateur scientist and the builder of the maze.  They are shocked to find that they have travelled back in time thanks to Geoffrey and his amateur meddling science.

For Alison the unexpected trip into the past is a horrible ordeal to be ended as quickly as possible.  The only highlight of the trip is that she has found Geoffrey who is as excited by the possibility of travelling into the future as she is about going home.  Now if only he could get his time travelling maze to work properly!

For Olivia however it is an opportunity she could not have dreamed of.  She is in the past she has only read about, it is a chance to hone her acting skills as she blends in with the locals and most importantly, she too has found the man of her dreams in the form of Lord Nicholas Talcott, Geoffrey’s older brother and temporary host to the court of Queen Elizabeth I.

Swept into the intrigues of the royal court Olivia finds herself journeying to France with Nicholas in the guise of his wife as they attempt to trap a Spanish spy…but Lord Nicholas has many enemies and soon they must wonder just who is trapping whom?

The longer Olivia finds herself in the company of Lord Nicholas the more she begins to care for him and to wonder just whether it would be possible to remain in the past with him despite Alison’s conviction to return to the future and her own reservations about altering the past.

The Elizabethan Era has never looked so tempting as a whole host of historical characters grace the pages of this novel.  It is as easy to get lost in this story and lose track of the time as it was for Olivia and Alison to get lost in the maze.  Original and lively, this is Ms Kelleher’s best work yet.
 

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Also by Anne Kelleher:  A Once and Future Love and The Ghost and Katie Coyle