Synopsis from Amazon:
Iris Jacobs stands at a crossroads. An adventure beyond time has changed her entire reality. Now she’s struggling to pick up where she left off, both in life and in love… to find a new normal. That’s when she discovers that a man she believed was a simple high school teacher actually lives under a secret identity, part of a clandestine worldwide organization. He approaches her with a mysterious job offer that could be the career she’s always dreamed about. The catch? She can’t breathe a word of it to anyone, not even the man she’s just beginning to love. The deeper Iris goes, the more she finds herself irresistibly drawn into a history that shifts the universe around One Person who’s deeply in love with her. At the same time, she’s forced to confront a darkness that she never knew existed as an old enemy returns, intent on revenge, and ancient evils join forces to destroy her. As lies and darkness collide with Truth and Light, Iris’s doubts could be her downfall. Can she stake her safety on her new identity? Will she find the courage to protect someone who deserves to be lost?
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My Review:
What a book this was! I first started this series with the first book in 2019, hot off the heels of reading Outlander and enjoying the characters and the time travel aspect more than the... steamy scenes. The Emergence provided me with a touch of time travel, some wholesome, clean romance, and amazing characters that I could easily obsess over!
Now, with The Guardian, Morris cranks up the lore into high gear! The plot revolves around another "man out of his time" who, rather than making an innocent mistake like Angus did in the first book, was encouraged to damage a Time Tree on purpose... and Iris has to work with the local Guardians to figure out where the Time Tree shards ended up and restore everything. Here's where things get weird: Morris "pulls back the curtain" on the spiritual side that she more hinted at in the first book, and we get a lot more interactions between the spirits of light who are trying to defend and protect their mortal charges, and those of darkness that are manipulating human nature to try and destroy the network of Time Trees and their Guardians. Those scenes gave me chills to read! I've seen reviews that compare the imagery to that of Frank Peretti, and I couldn't agree more!
Iris is learning more about the Guardian life, and she's actually been offered the choice to become a Guardian--but will that mean she has to abandon a future with Will? Meanwhile, how do you help somebody who's been deceived so deeply that he is convinced he doesn't need help? I loved the way that as Iris gets deeper into the lore and "The Histories" of the Guardians (if you know, you know!), the more she wrestles with her own personal feelings and reconciling what she's learning with everything she thought she already knew.
This is where Morris shines as a Christian author. She grows from subtle influences in the first book to absolutely littering the narrative with clear presentations of the Gospel--but couched within the lore of the story! A lot of my complaint about much of Christian literature is that it tends to sort of shoe-horn a gospel presentation that feels more compulsory, like of course they're going to try and "weasel" a straight-up Gospel presentation into a conversation, whether or not it fits very well in the moment! I even wrote a blog post about it, coming from the perspective that if a blatant Gospel presentation and subsequent conversion of the characters isn't going to fit, don't put it in, or at the very least, figure out a way to fit it in that aligns with the plot first. I confess I was bracing myself for something of this nature--only to discover that Morris has essentially crafted a lore that aligns with Scripture itself so well that she could phrase things in the terminology of the Guardians (i.e., "the Histories" refers to the Bible... now you know!) and it still agrees with Scripture without taking anything away from the fictional plot itself! And the decisions of the characters to enter into belief, rather than feeling inevitable (like the plot of every single Hallmark movie ever), felt natural and unique to each character, almost a resolution to their individual character arc. A brilliant stroke of genius!
Suffice to say, I loved this book! As a sequel, as a Christian supernatural adventure novel, every beat landed perfectly, it kept me hooked from the first page to the last, it evoked all the emotions, and it is an incredible book! The Guardian earns a *****5 STAR***** rating as well as an Upstream Writer Certified WHOLEHEARTEDLY RECOMMENDED endorsement. Even if you don't necessarily agree with a lot of the Christian belief--if you're at all interested in supernatural novels and prefer clean romance, the whole Time Tree series is a wondrous good time!
Further Reading: (Also By the Author/Time Travel/Christian Author/Supernatural/Clean Reading)
The Time Tree Chronicles--Lisa Rae Morris
-The Emergence
-The Emergence
-The Guardian (*This book)
-The Three
The LouisiAngel Series--C. L. Coffey
-Angel in Training
-Angel Eclipsed
-Angel Tormented
-Angel in Training
-Angel Eclipsed
-Angel Tormented
The Cadeau Series--Connie Olvera
-Who Can You Trust?
-Who Can You Trust?
Verona: The Complete Mermaid Tales--Pauline Creeden
-Scales
-Submerged
-Salt
-Surfacing
-Scales
-Submerged
-Salt
-Surfacing
The Fair Folk Chronicles--Jeffrey Cook and Katherine Perkins
-Foul is Fair
-Street Fair
-A Fair Fight
-All's Fair
-Foul is Fair
-Street Fair
-A Fair Fight
-All's Fair
