Virlana Kardash
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Readers’ Favorite 5 Stars
Virlana Kardash's A Dark Slip of Time is a hauntingly beautiful historical romance that feels like a violent collision between the centuries. Moving with a fast, riveting pace, the story delivers authentic action—from bloody raids to high-stakes sea battles. But Allie and Callum are the real heart of the book; their bond isn't just about chemistry, it’s about bearing the burden of carrying memories that haven’t happened yet. Watching Allie find her voice in a patriarchal world makes this as much a story of identity and reincarnation as it is about time travel. Kardash avoids using generic fantasy tropes. Rather, she uses sensory details that make every shift in time feel like a physical change in the air. It's a must-read for fans of strong, capable heroines fighting for their independence across every era. Highly recommended.
Reviewed by Tanya Kays for Readers’ Favorite
Readers’ Favorite 5 Stars
Readers…will likely remember this novel long after finishing it. I know I will.
Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers’ Favorite
The Indie We Love
A Dark Slip of Time is a generous and confident time-slipping fantasy novel about love that endures across lifetimes. Virlana Kardash’s ambitious fantasy novel folds grief, desire, and temporal rupture into its story of a passionate coupling that defies time…a striking fantasy novel about memory, recurrence, and hard-won romantic recognition.
Reviewed by John M. Murray for Foreword Clarion Reviews, The Indie We Love
Blue Ink Reviews
A Dark Slip of Time is a haunting, absorbing novel that follows its protagonists…as they slip through modern Toronto and into long-ago time periods…The novel includes actual historical events, such as the challenges settlers faced in Halifax, described as a town where wolves dug bodies out of the ground and violence and disease were constant threats. Period language creates vivid historical settings and dialogue.
From the start, the novel maintains a strong sense of suspense…The novel succeeds at creating atmospheric settings and its thrilling scenes and memorable characters, whose connection withstands multiple lives, make for an engaging read.
Reviewed by Blue Ink Reviews
Readers’ Favorite 5 Stars
In A Dark Slip of Time, Virlana Kardash keeps the origin stories brief…The dialogue goes from casual to intricately detailed and back almost imperceptibly. The author deserves plaudits for using appropriate Gaelic and Old English phrases. When combined with references to popular English regents, unique fighting styles, and weapons specific to particular timelines in the British Isles, the result is an immersive narrative that will impress even diehard romance and fantasy purists. Factor in the graduated pace, strategically placed clues, and intense romantic scenes that leave little to the imagination, and you have a masterpiece. I enjoyed reading this fascinating novel.
Reviewed by Essien Asian for Readers’ Favorite
Readers’ Favorite 5 Stars
A Dark Slip of Time by Virlana Kardash contains enough hardship, suspense, romance, adventure, and medieval history to keep you turning the pages to see how it all turns out. It's tragic and also hopeful. It's a love story with satisfying romance, adventure, and immersive storytelling, and I had a wonderful time reading it. I found the female protagonist most memorable for her determination to be the mistress of her own fate…Anyone interested in historical fiction, time-travel novels, or love stories will enjoy this tale of fierce love and adventure across the centuries.
Reviewed by Emma Megan for Readers’ Favorite
Sasha Graham
Kardash crafts spellbinding characters in a rich, romantic escape reminding us why a love that saves us is worth fighting for.
Sasha Graham, Author of Vampire's Tale Tarot
Readers’ Favorite 5 Stars
Virlana Kardash’s A Dark Slip of Time is a bold time-slip romance that follows one person across three distinct eras after a love that constantly slips away. Allie Sutherland is a doctoral student researching medieval Scottish warfare in modern Toronto. She has been through a divorce and is reluctant to entertain new suitors until a stranger crosses her path and the chemistry is something she can’t ignore. When Callum Brodie touches her wrist in a library, she is transported into 1296 as Aileen Douglas, the wife of Callum Brodie, a commander of the Black Douglas clan. Treachery breaks them apart, but that is not the end yet. Aileen wakes up in Halifax in 1750 as Annie Jean Turner, a laundress who finds her heart again with David Williamson, a merchant captain, the reincarnated soul of Callum. The story follows their love through piracy, shipwreck, and the liminal space between lives. Can what they experience now endure?
A Dark Slip of Time was an engaging story that I read in one sitting; it is character-driven and suspenseful. I was captivated by the exceptional depiction of the heroine. Allie is intellectually detached and focused, Aileen excels in her grit, and Annie is street-smart with the kind of desperation that translates to female survival. The worldbuilding was expertly handled, and the author rendered the clinical modernity of Toronto with brilliance. Medieval Scotland is depicted as a place where clan betrayals and prophecies coexist, and the maritime world of 1750 captures the threats of pirates and the brutal calculus of commerce. Virlana Kardash uses compelling conflict to drive the plot forward, underlining the physical dangers, such as pirate raids, alongside the inner torments of a woman unraveling her love and identity while trapped in different bodies. The author treats time in this story as a “scrunched-up napkin” of parallel strands where the boundaries between the past and the present bleed through inherited scars and déjà vu.
Reviewed by Divine Zape for Readers’ Favorite
The Kingstonist
A Dark Slip of Time is perfect for readers who enjoy some history with their romance, or vice versa.
Reviewed by Jessica Foley for The Kingstonist.
Click on the full article by Jessica.