The Girl from Everywhere

Nix has spent her life aboard her father's ship.  The small crew is her family, and she's pretty happy with that.  This is no ordinary crew and no ordinary ship.  With her father, Slate, as captain and navigator, The Temptation can sail across time and place.

How does it work?  They need a map.  It has to be a new to the crew map, authentic, perfectly accurate, and it must lead to a time in a place they've never been before.  Slate fell in love with Nix's mother in Honolulu of the late 1860's.  He left to make money to build a home, but by the time he returned, Lin was dead leaving an infant daughter.  Slate has spent the last 16 years trying to get back to the island early to save his beloved from the infection that killed her--regardless of what that might mean for Nix's very existence.

Once again they are on a quest to get back to the right time and place on the island with what they believe is an accurate map, but once they sail into port, Nix and Slate both know that they have landed in the 1880's--too late to save Lin.  But they soon become involved in a plot to steal money from the Hawaiian king's treasury in exchange for a new map, the one that will finally reunite Slate and Lin.

Heidi Heilig's debut novel promises swashbuckling time travel and romance, and it sometimes delivers.  I wanted more character development for ship's crew who come from diverse times and places.  I also kept waiting for the big explanation of how the conspirators knew the right hook to drag Slate into their plot.  Maybe I missed something?  This was a pretty good story, but I doubt I will take time on the sequel.