This HaBO comes from Amel, who wants to find this time travel romance. They also swear it’s not Outlander:
There is this book I read a few years ago, and I have been looking for it everywhere, at this point I am desperate to find it. Here is the story:
It is a time-travel romance novel set in the UK. A female student (maybe medical school), very intelligent goes to her parents’ house during Christmas break. Her father and stepmother are very wealthy, she gets along with her dad, but not her stepmother. She has a stepsister which is the favourite child. Her sister gets all the attention, gifts, etc, all in all, the heroine is kind of a loner that does not integrate well in her family environment. At home, the heroine is closer to the domestic helper than her own parents.
Then she is supposed to go camping with her dad near the house, but he cancels and she goes alone. When she wakes up she finds out that she is not in the 21st century UK, but in another time. She observes people from afar and does not understand the language, she recognizes something like middle-age English and she has to learn this language. She does not go into the village but finds a cave and survives in it for like 1-2 years. She lives off of the forest, scavenging for food. Eventually, after much observation, she ventures into the villages and sells her services as a healer. Then there is a romance element, but I completely forgot about this.
Let’s solve this HaBO!
This book sounds really interesting, I hope we find it so I can read it too.
My 2 cents as a long time SFF reader, this may be categorized under the fantasy genre and not romance. If it’s YA then that’s another category. (The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger has been called romance, fantasy, science fiction, women’s domestic fiction and literary fiction.)
Definitely getting Outlander vibes in the setting but sounds like the romance is a subplot.
Sounds like Aura, by M.A. Abraham.
I speak fluent middle-age English, and am currently learning old-age English. Sadly, tho, I don’t know this book.
@Susan, Your comment was so interesting that it sent me to the internet. I thought there was English language now and old English – Chaucer to me, but I see that is not accurate. Always something to learn here.
I have not a single idea what the title is or who the author is, but I want to read it.
I speak fluent middle-age English, and some Middle English, too.
The labels, btw, are “Old English” aka “Anglo-Saxon,” which is the language spoken in England before the Norman invasion of 1066; “Middle English,” which is what happens when a Germanic language (Anglo-Saxon) is strongly influenced by a romance language (Norman French), which, yes, is “the language of Chaucer”; and then “Modern English” which is what happens to Middle English after the double impact of “the great vowel shift” and the invention of printing. Or: why we find Shakespeare easier to read than Chaucer. (I’m a historian raised by English professors.)
Middle English is also the reason that living farm animals (cow, pig, hen) have different names when they’re cooked and eaten (beef, pork, poultry): the people who were raising the animals and the people who were eating the animals were from two different classes and essentially spoke two different forms of English. The eaters had a lot more French words and terms in their vocabulary.
Well, it’s probably not the right book but for a sci-fi classic with similar themes try The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. It won the Hugo and Nebula awards back in the early 1990s.
The Doomsday Book is A+ awesome
The Doomsday Book is fantastic, as is it’s sequel, To Say Nothing of the Dog, but the difference in tone between the two is so different it will give you whiplash.
I have no real idea, but it does sound like an early Johanna Lindsey book.
The parent situation is switched a bit, but the camping element is in there…I’m really pretty sure this is it.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16153279-aura
@Kate I read To Say Nothing of the Dog first and picked up The Doomsday Book expecting similar. I am so scarred by the experience.
To spare yourself the trauma of Joyce’s experience, enjoy this song about _The Doomsday Book_ by Connie Willis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrjZpseibAg
First Lessons by Lina J Potter but it has no stepmother
Looks like this is solved in post #12?