My Timeswept Heart by Amy J Fetzer is the prequel to Timeswept Rogue.  It is an out of print book and very difficult to find.  However just as the sequel, which I read first, stands on it's own, so does this novel.

Tess Renfrew is an Olympic-trained gymnast who decides to use her skills for the benefit of her friend Penny by breaking into the house of a blackmailer.
 

Knowing where the blackmailer is keeping the property should have clued in Tess to the fact that it was a trap.  However this knowledge came too late and Tess found herself running for her life with a fortune in stolen diamonds.

Trading places with Penny, Tess found herself on a cruise ship miles from land and being held at gunpoint.  She had not managed to lose the men who were chasing her for long and there was no other option but to jump overboard.  With a back flip Tess found herself in the water with her pursuers waving her goodbye.

All hope seemed lost for Tess until a friendly dolphin took her towards a black, mist-like wall, and into the past where Captain Dane Blackwell was on course to draw her out of the water and into an adventure in 1789.

Captain Dane Blackwell was on a mission for revenge against the death of his sister.  After glimpsing a ghostly ship in the distance that moved faster than was possible, his own ship was then tossed about by a sudden storm.  And in the midst of the chaos he found Tess clinging to the dolphin and immediately took her aboard his ship.

Blackwell was at a mystery to where the mysterious lady had come from.  He soon became convinced that her family had set her adrift for a reason he could not imagine.  And the longer she stayed on board his vessel the stronger became his conviction that she was clearly suffering from insanity.

It does not take Tess long to realise that she is no longer in the twentieth century.  Although she at first tries to put it down to a re-enactment or to the handsome captain being a rich eccentric, when the fighting begins and people start dying she suddenly needs no more convincing of just what kind of trouble she is in.

Keeping the truth about herself a secret Tess strives to win the crew's acceptance, for they want no woman on board their ship, least of all a witch.

Taken along by Captain Blackwell, Tess is swept along in his wake where she meets Ramsey O'Keefe, the rogue in the sequel, and finds herself caught up on the plots of revenge both of Dane and Phillip.

I thought that this was an excellent book but while the sequel seemed to stand very well on its own this novel leaves far too many loose ends in it for there not to be a sequel.  I was lucky enough to have read the sequel first.  I feel that if you read only this first novel there is just far too much incomplete.  This novel does not seem to stand very well on it's own, at least not for someone like me who insists on all the loose ends being tied up neatly at the end.  If you read the first novel I would really recommend reading the second one too.

There are lots of interesting twists in the plot to keep the story going.

It was a good thing that Ramsey was introduced so late in the novel, or I fear he would have stolen the show in this book too.

I did not feel that this book was as good as Timeswept Rogue but that is just my opinion and I almost always like the ones where men from the past come to the future better than those where the heroine goes into the past.  The hero's bungling about in the present are always sooo entertaining.

Together these two books make an excellent series but if you can only read one I would recommend Timeswept Rogue.

RATING : 
(if you need an explanation of the hearts ratings see my homepage)

Also by Amy J Fetzer :  Timeswept Rogue, Thunder in the Heart and Lion Heart.

Amy's  Web Site.

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