Another enjoyable trip through time with St. Mary's. This one had surprising emotional depths, as well as the expected moments of sheer historical silliness.

Content warning: attempted and implied sexual assault.

Book two in the Chronicles of St Mary's is just as good as the first! Rather than one overarching plot, we have a series of episodic adventures that give you a great glimpse into the workings of St Mary's - this time, we have an ill-advised trip to the future, a terrifying encounter with Jack the Ripper (one of the very few times I've ever enjoyed the Ripper in fiction - normally I find it very distasteful but this is a pretty cool take), and a race to get Mary Stuart's timeline back on track! Max's wit and gung-ho attitude are as entertaining as ever, and while there's a bit of character stuff that isn't my favourite (relationship issues that could be solved with a single conversation!) the book is so fast-paced that it's not long before something else is the focus.

Absolutely brilliant fun!

I adore this series. It can only be described as pure escapism! The time travel / investigating history concept had me hooked but the fun characters and story development has made me a life long fan! I re-read the whole series every year before the next book comes out!

I really loved the development of this book and I can’t wait to read the entire of this series! Full review up soon!

I really enjoyed Just One Damned Thing after another and was looking forward to book 2 although unsure if the freshness, novelty and fun could be maintained, sometimes unique novels don't quite work in a series and JODTAA had been satisfyingly complete . Delighted to say A Symphony of Echoes is even better, the characters engaging, situations thrilling and plausible, the humour perfectly judged. Max is a great heroine and I'm looking forward to more adventures with her. Thankyou to Headline and Netgalley for a free ARC and a lot of reading pleasure.

I received a free ecopy of this book in return for an honest review. Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity.

Having finished book #1 Just One Damned Thing After Another, I rushed headlong into book 2 almost without drawing breath. The first thing I always ask myself when reviewing a book that is not the first in the series is; is it necessary to read the earlier books first? I don’t think it is, in this case, as any information you need is given, but things will make more sense if you have.

This book follows the same pattern as the first in abandoning the three act structure and presents us with an uneven spread of exciting events. I love that I never know when the next big event is coming. We start with Jack the Ripper that indicates these books are more supernatural in nature than they first appear. We are then flung forward to a future St Mary’s which is under threat from renegade former employees. After an interlude with the dodos, we finish up with a trip back to Elizabethan times where history has taken a wrong turn and needs setting right.

In this book we can see that the main character, Max, is developing rather a ruthless streak. She fights back when threatened, and does what needs to done. This, though, is not without conscience, fortunately, because it’s that conscience that mitigates my feelings on her actions regarding Mary Queen of Scots. However, the gentle humour throughout the book ensures that we never take any event too seriously.

I have found myself having a quick look on Wikipedia for a brush up on my history knowledge whilst reading these books. My fifth form teacher would have been delighted to see me showing this much interest. I’ve even gone so far as to download a couple of history books to read later. Not a side effect I was expecting when I started this series.

If you are looking for a light-hearted series to follow, then look no further. These books are an entertaining read with a little real, factual information thrown in. Never has learning trivia been so enjoyable.

Absolutely loving this series, time hopping historians with a penchant for trouble. The characters are brilliant, in fact the whole concept is quite brilliant. Darkly humorous with plenty of action, this is a definite recommend!

A Symphony of Echoes was a lot of fun to read! Ok, so it’s best not to think too hard about what you’re reading while you’re reading it, but if you want a fun, silly, time-travelling jaunt with the odd trauma thrown in then this is the book for you.

I have read the first book in this series, but it was two and a half years ago and to be honest I barely remember it. That meant I was coming into this one without much idea of who everybody was or what had happened. It turns out this isn’t a great idea. There’s a list of dramatis personae at the front but it’s more of a tongue-in-cheek moment of humour than a useful list to give a quick reminder! Which is fine, but it took a while for me to work everything out.

I do enjoy the character of Max, who narrates the story in the first person. I think Max thinks that she’s more eccentric and wacky than she actually is, but that’s more amusing than anything else – and after all, which of us has a perfectly accurate picture of our own personality! Max is intelligent, loyal, brave, quick-thinking and wears her heart on her sleeve. She’s also immature, quick to anger, a tad self-righteous, and her common sense could sometimes do with a bit of a boost. All this makes for a fun protagonist and and a fast-moving style of storytelling.

The side characters… honestly, I was a little disappointed. I couldn’t really see why Max likes Farrell so much. He seemed pretty boring to me. And all the crap that happened between them was one of those frustrating points of conflict which could easily be solved by a conversation between the characters. Sigh. As for the others, there seeemed very little to them. Peterson was nice enough. The woman who’s described as Max’s best friend was barely a character at all and Max didn’t seem to miss her when she was gone. Sorry, they’re best friends why? Even the villains seemed nebulous. We barely met them, and they didn’t feel like real people to me. I never got a grasp on who they were. Perhaps this is all an I-forgot-the-first-book problem… but it seems like rather lazy writing to rely on readers remembering exactly what happened and how we felt about it from a previous book.

The thing that really threw me with A Symphony of Echoes was that we didn’t start with the main story. In fact, it took us almost a fifth of the book – and it was not a long book! – to get to the story that the rest of the book deals with. Don’t get me wrong, that first fifth is HUGE fun and the Jack the Ripper thing is super super creepy. I kind of wished the whole novel was about it – it could easily have been done and for a while there I actually thought that was what was going to happen. But at about 20% (yes, I was reading on my Kindle) that whole episode just… finishes. I kept on looking for there to be a Jack the Ripper Thing thread running through, but nope. We simply moved onto a whole new plot.

Again, don’t get me wrong, that plot was also a lot of fun and there were some great twists in there. But why do we have a completely unrelated adventure tacked onto the beginning of this book? It’s not part of the main story. There are no elements running through it, even, that link us to the main plot. The result is that this whole book reads like a short story plus a novella, and since that wasn’t what I was expecting it threw me and made the whole thing feel very unbalanced. I’ll be interested to see if the next book is more coherent as an entire story or if this is just the way Jodi Taylor writes her books!

Having said all that, the point of these books seems to be far more the action and historical fun than the characters – and perhaps that’s why I struggled a bit. I can forgive a lot for characters I love, but if they don’t feel real to me then the other flaws in a book tend to leap out and annoy me more. This is why I suggested at the beginning that these are not books you should be thinking too hard about while you read them – neither the characters nor the plotting are particularly stellar. Yet Max has a really pacey, zesty way of telling a story, and if you let yourself be carried away on her flood of enthusiasm you’ll probably have a splendid time!

Am a late comer to this series but was immediately hooked once I read the tagline 'tea soaked disaster magnets who investigate major historical events in contemporary time'. It is a delightful mix of death defying historical adventures and madcap workplace mishaps. It is lighthearted and also sooo much fun, you'll definitely have squad goal envy. Found myself immediately turning to the internet to source the next in the series after finishing it at 3am.

A word of caution though, Taylor is more ruthless than GRR Martin with her culling of the Dramatis Thingummy . You WILL spend large portions of the book gnawing your nails down to stubs and pulling out your hair while waiting with baited breath to see which of your cast favourites will or will not survive the latest shenanigans and adventures.

Recommend for weekend reading: more time to spend reading with fewer interruptions; it's easier to stay up till the wee hours of the morning finishing it; and you won't have fellow commuters giving you weird looks when you unintentionally and loudly exclaim in horror 'NOOOO!' once the next inevitable disaster strikes the St Mary's team.

Book 2 and things are as mad as ever at St Mary's! Max continues to hurtle around the timeline from an ill-advised trip to see Jack The Ripper in Victorian London to sorting out the 'wrong' queen in Renaissance London.

I find this series glorious fun as a romp through history with echoes of Dr Who and a bit Harry Potter. There's an overarching good vs. evil plot that carries through across books, as well as a slightly on/off love interest for Max.

My niggles from book 1 still hold: the history can be under-used as our historians flit in and out, and the minor characters are barely even paper-thin. Despite this, these books are just so good-natured, warm and funny that it's pointless to want them to be something they're not.

The second St. Mary’s book has a lot of what I loved from the first book - lots of skipping about through time, trying not to die in the process, with maverick historians. It’s almost like a good night out with your friends, but instead of going down the pub you’re nipping to 17th century Scotland.

As always, I love these characters. They are the heart and soul of the novels, the biggest ups and downs come from reading about their lives rather than the lives they’re ‘time travelling’ (sorry Dr Bairstow!) for. Max and Leon aren’t a perfect couple, but it makes them all the more believable. Both have a chequered past, marred with not enough love and too much mistrust, and I enjoy seeing how their time together plays out. They’re well matched, and Max doesn’t take the things Leon says to her lying down this time around. I admire that tenacity. As before, Jodi also has a knack for making you fall in love with the underrated characters too, and has no issues with completely ripping your heart out by taking them away at short notice. That’s actually one of things I really like about this series. You genuinely don’t know, and expect it, when someone dies. And it could be anyone.

I feel like quite a bit of this book is Jodi experimenting with the genre. The plot flits about, bouncing Max and co. from one end of the timeline to the other, with elements of the supernatural thrown in for good measure. Stories have a quick turn around, often ending quite abruptly and never mentioned again, and some are left quite open ended. I felt this was more Jodi playing around, and getting a feel for her characters and settings over a more structured, methodical approach. This is just the way Jodi writes it and as I mentioned in the previous book review, it’s all very chaotic and unplanned. But I’m ok with this, partially because it’s just St. Mary’s way, but also as Jodi emerges as a more confident writer this settles down in subsequent novels. Already I can see an improvement in the writing from the previous novel, with timescales and the passing of contemporary time passing in a more realistic way. Yet again, Jodi is also able to get me excited and interested in area of history I never would have thought twice about. Her passion for the subject shines through, and I love the amount of research and detail that goes into the descriptions of their journey’s through time.

The St. Mary’s crew feel like family, and St. Mary’s feels like a home from home. To return to these books is like a giant comfort blanket for me (one that sometimes delivers awful death blows), and I will continue to enjoy the stories for many years to come. There’s always more history to explore.

"History is a symphony of echoes. every little action has huge consequences."

* * * 
3 / 5

It is rare that a sequel is quite as good as the original, particularly when the whole series of books rests on the premise "historians go back in time", because obviously each book is going to involve going back in time to various events. A Symphony of Echoes was a solid book, but it didn't capture the magic of the original.

"People sometimes think St. Mary's is just a charmingly eccentric bunch of amiable history nuts. And we are. But make no mistake, St. Mary's has teeth."

My first complaint is that the book didn't feel particularly focused. We start off with a cracker of a scene involving Jack the Ripper that felt like it was building up to something important, but was then quickly dropped. Okay. Then the crew hopped around in time between Victorian England, Thomas a Becket, the time of the dodo, and Mary Stuart in quick succession. Mixed in is a bunch of stuff about Ronan and Isabella Barclay. Whilst I thought it was cool that we got to see such a variety of times and places, I thought that the plot could do with more focus - there's a lot going on in this book. 

Two: Leon Farrell. He should be dropped faster than a hot potato. Max isn't exactly the most rational and wholesome person ever; she's volatile and a little prone to violence and rash decision-making. But Leon Farrell can be straight up cruel. They bring out the absolute worst in each other and I hated that a lot of the drama in the book came from their tumultuous relationship. Just kill him off already! 

"The whole city was waking now. Every dog in the city was yelling his head off. You could tell St. Mary's was in town."

Thankfully, I love a lot of the other characters. Tim Peterson is a wholesome lad, Kalinda Black is an interesting eccentric historian, Dr Bairstow has that loving fatherly vibe going on, and Guthrie always come through for the team. I also adore the writing style - the whole book is so deliciously quotable. It's got those poignant lines, thoughtful titbits, but also witty and banterous conversations that made me laugh out loud. The nature of the time paradox is handled well and the book throws in a bunch of moral quandaries at Max, some of which made me put the book down and breathe because some of the decisions she has to make are truly tough.

A Symphony of Echoes is a solidly enjoyable sequel with action, drama, sweet moments, a tight-knit team, and unguessable plot points. A true adventure.

My thanks to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for an ARC of this book.

This is the second book in the St. Mary’s series and Jodi Taylor does it again. A brilliant yomp through history with humour thrown in. Brilliant.

This was a great follow up to the first book, and I enjoyed it at least as much. I love stories about Jack the Ripper and this was a very good example of integrating that mystery.

I enjoy the characters, they are humorous, quirky, interesting. I like the plot, the pace. I would recommend these series. So much fun!

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for this free copy in exchange for an honest opinion

This was a great follow up to Just One Damned Thing after another and i must say i did enjoy it more.
I'm a big fan of stories about Jack the Ripper and i think Taylor did an excellent job of bringing the mystery to life in this book.

The characters are quirky and lively and i liked them a lot. The plot goes a little haywire in part but after reading the first book i came to expect it somewhat and enjoyed it for what it was - a very fun read!

I enjoyed this mostly I think i enjoyed this more than the first book, but again it just didn’t satisfy me as much as I wanted it too. There were things in the plot that felt unnecessary like the break apart and sudden getting back together. It’s still very chaotic and doesn’t feel planned plot wise.


Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion