CAROLE'S BOOK CORNER: The Christmas Eve Daughter by Elyse Douglas

The Christmas Eve Daughter: Time Travel Novel

Elyse Douglas

Publication Date: 12 September 2018

Genre: Time Travel, Historical Fiction, Romance, Christmas

The sequel to The Christmas Eve Letter!

When husband and wife, Eve and Patrick Gantly, discover a shocking secret from Patrick’s past, they make the difficult decision to use the old lantern once again to return to 1885. They hope to save his child from a tragic future.

Although they try to plan for every possible contingency, something goes wrong. They lose each other and end up in a different time! Nothing goes as planned. They struggle to save Patrick’s daughter from certain death, even as they search for the lost lantern that will return them to their own time.

GUEST REVIEW BY KATY

So before I say anything I should note that this is the sequel to the first book in the series called 'The Christmas Letter' and I have not read that book (yet!). I normally do not start a series on the second book but was told that it can easily be read without having read the first book. Once I got started it was like I couldn't stop reading. This book had everything! Action, romance, time-travel, historical settings. It's like everything I love in a novel rolled up into one book.

Even though this is the second book in the series, I really didn't feel confused or in the dark about the story line. The author recaps everything well in the beginning and also as you go along throughout the novel I felt like I understood what was happening the whole time.

I get that Patrick is a time traveler. He lives in current-day New York with his wife, Eve. This story revolves around Patrick finding out he had a daughter back in his own time, 1885 and deciding to go back to find her. Their method of transportation left me pretty intrigued. It's a lantern that they have to stare into but it's unreliable. It can transport them to any place in time it chooses. I thought that was so cool as I don't think I've ever seen a lantern time machine in a book or movie before.

All in all, I give this five stars. Excellent world-building and historical writing. I loved Patrick and Eve's characters and I really enjoyed their romance. I've already started reading the first book in the series so I can see where it all began. Hopefully this Elyse Douglas is planning more books for this series! I know I will be eagerly awaiting them.

Excerpt One

The Christmas Eve Letter

The restless sounds of the modern-day streets still jarred Patrick, the man from 1885. The casual mode of dress he thought weird, and at times vulgar. He constantly struggled with the loose, edgy mainstream language that was batted around ceaselessly, peppered with needless and repetitive profanity. He did not, in any way, consider himself to be a prude. After all, in 1885 he had been a New York City Detective-Sergeant. He’d known violence, death, poverty, and a brutality that people in 2018 would never see or experience. But he found that this modern-day communication-obsessive society was filled with rudeness and disrespect, and the harsh jargon was an insult to his ears.

Eve had helped him make the difficult transition from an 1885 gentleman to a 2018 guy, but it was often a battle for him to let go of his old ways and his more formal style of speech, which that Eve’s friends and parents thought archaic and a little humorous.

Sometimes Eve would say “Patrick, you have to live the time you’re in. You can’t be an 1885 man living in 2018. It will pull you apart.”

But that afternoon, while Patrick had searched for Gantlys, he’d clicked on a link that landed him on a page he’d never seen before and could have never anticipated. As he nosed closer to the screen, eyes widening, reading the article and studying the grainy black and white photo of the young woman looking back at him, he was shaken to the core. He began to tremble, and sweat beads popped out on his forehead.

It was unbelievable. Impossible. How could it have happened? The more he read, the more he knew it was not impossible. The more he realized, without a doubt, that what the article said was, in fact, the truth. The whole, painful, shocking and devastating truth.

It was an earthquake that shook down inner towers and crumbled the walls of past and present. It was a catastrophe. What had he done?

While waiting for Eve to arrive home, Patrick had paced the apartment and then taken Georgy Boy, their half-beagle, half-springer spaniel, for a walk in River-side Park, hoping a change of scenery would help him untangle his gnarled thoughts.

But as soon as Eve had opened the door, she’d noticed his troubled expression. She’d knelt to rub Georgy Boy’s ears, allowing him to lap at her cheek, all the while gathering herself, finally glancing up at Patrick and asking him what had happened. Still shaken, he’d asked her to go into the kitchen and read the article he’d pulled up on the laptop.

She’d done so, hesitating before she eased down on-to the kitchen stool, her eyes reluctantly lowering as she began to read. Minutes later, she was still, her face slowly drained of color. The words came alive, and they had a terrible, immediate impact.

The article was an old one. It was an interview of an actress, dancer, and singer who had performed in the first Ziegfeld Follies back in 1907. The article held a secret about Patrick that would utterly change their lives, and Patrick wondered if their marriage would survive it.

The Theatre Magazine, December 27, 1914

Naughty Parts in Naughty Plays Remembering Maggie Lott Gantly

Some women are born to it, some can achieve it, but it is never acquired by practice or through tireless publicity. It is that ineffable something that cannot be de-fined by words, cannot be touched and, once held, can never be lost. Of course, I am referring to the innocent magnetism of Maggie Lott Gantly, the original naughty girl. In Miss Gantly’s most famous role as Henrietta in The Silk Lady, she is frivolous, discreet, conventional and very smart, even if she is not always attracted to the right kind of man.

Two nights ago, on December 24, 1914, her twenty-ninth birthday, Maggie Lott Gantly was found dead in her Fifth Avenue St. Regis bedroom.

She was murdered in the vilest and cruelest of ways, stabbed to death repeatedly and viciously by her gentleman companion, Big Jim Clancy, a known New York gambler and saloon owner. He was found at the scene, knife in hand, “weeping like a child.” He readily con-fessed to the murder saying, “My dearest Maggie, my dearest girl, is all mine now, and no other man shall ever touch her cheek or kiss those lips.”

There will be a private service held today at St. Paul’s Chapel. Maggie Lott Gantly will attain her final rest at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Eve’s eyes slowly lifted from the laptop article. She stared uneasily, feeling a rising nausea. Patrick was downcast, his eyes searching the walls. The couple remained silent, breathing in and breathing out, as if hoping the air could provide some answers.

About Elyse Douglas

Elyse Douglas is the pen name for the husband and wife writing team of Elyse Parmentier and Douglas Pennington. Elyse began writing poems and short stories at an early age and graduated with a degree in English Literature. Douglas began writing novels in college, while studying music at the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. He traveled the world as a professional pianist for many years. He has also worked as a copywriter and corporate manager.

Some of Elyse Douglas’ novels include: The Christmas Eve Letter (A Time Travel Novel), Christmas for Juliet, The Summer Letters, The Christmas Diary, The Summer Diary, and The Lost Mata Hari Ring. They live in New York City.

Website: www.elysedouglas.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/douglaselyse
Facebook: www.facebook.com/elyse.authorsdouglas